US President Donald Trump has apparently persuaded Russian President Vladimir Putin to take a week-long ceasefire. (archive image)Image: keystone
January 29, 2026, 8:49 p.mJan 29, 2026, 10:32 p.m
According to US President Donald Trump, there is hope for a limited ceasefire for Ukraine, which has been badly affected in the fourth winter of war. During a phone call, Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin agreed to his request for a week-long pause in Russian attacks on Kiev and other Ukrainian cities, Trump said. The Republican cited the extreme cold in Ukraine as the reason for his initiative with Putin. That’s why he personally asked about the break in the attack.
Reactions from Moscow and Kyiv
There was initially no official confirmation of this from Moscow. Trump’s remarks during a Cabinet meeting in Washington did not reveal exactly when the alleged pause in attacks would begin.
According to Ukrainian head of state Volodymyr Zelensky, it is uncertain whether the limited ceasefire for Ukraine announced by US President Donald Trump will come about. He first thanked the US for its efforts to achieve a moratorium on Russian attacks on energy facilities. “The situation now at night and in the coming days, the actual situation in our energy facilities and cities” will show whether there will actually be a ceasefire, Zelensky said in his evening video message.
Speculation about a ceasefire is increasing
Trump’s statements come against the backdrop of increasing speculation about such a ceasefire. Hours before Trump’s remarks, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov did not want to comment on reports of an impending agreement on a waiver of strikes against energy objects.
The last air alarm in Kiev to date was triggered on Wednesday night. On Thursday night, the drones flew past the Ukrainian capital, but struck elsewhere in the country.
Russian military bloggers outraged
Russian military bloggers have already expressed their outrage. There is information that the Russian armed forces have been banned from strikes against Kiev and the surrounding area as well as against all infrastructure objects since this Thursday morning (07:00 a.m. (local time)/05:00 a.m. CET), wrote the military blogger Romanov Light. He published several posts by Russian soldiers who spoke of “treason” in this context.
The widely read Rybar blog, which is close to the Russian Defense Ministry, speculated that a possible pause could be related to the upcoming round of negotiations in Abu Dhabi, where Russians and Ukrainians, with US mediation, are talking about an end to the four-year war. At the same time, Rybar said that a ceasefire for humanitarian reasons to protect the Ukrainian population during the frost was “pointless”. Strikes against the neighboring country’s already weakened energy network would be “a very good lever” against Kiev, the blog argued.
Ukraine badly affected
Russia has bombarded Ukraine with heavy air attacks during this relatively harsh winter. The already severely weakened electricity and heating network continued to be systematically attacked. Two serious attacks hit Kyiv in the first half of January.
After renewed shelling of the thermal power plants on Saturday, around 6,000 blocks of flats, a good half of the city with over a million inhabitants, were left without district heating, with temperatures in the double-digit range below zero. There are now “only” around 450 apartment blocks left.
The electricity supplier had to resort to emergency shutdowns. Scheduled power cuts were only reintroduced on Thursday morning, meaning that many people in Kiev will have at least five to eight hours of electricity a day again.
After two days with slightly above zero degrees, heavy frosts are expected again for the weekend, with temperatures sometimes falling below minus 20 degrees at night. Klitschko had already asked residents to leave Kiev, at least for a short time, if possible.
Not everyone in Ukraine trusts the partial ceasefire announced by Trump. The mayor of the city of Lviv, Andriy Sadowyj, called for people to prepare for a disaster. The enemy could try to take advantage of the severe frost to attack the energy grid again, he warned on Telegram. (hkl/sda/dpa)