MOSCOW (REUTERS)
The Kremlin said on Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to a personal request from US President Donald Trump to halt strikes on Kyiv until February 1 to create "favourable conditions" for peace talks.
Trump said on Thursday that Putin had agreed to refrain from firing on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities for a week because of cold weather, but did not say when that period would expire.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, replying to reporters' questions on Friday, did not cite the weather as a factor.
"President Trump did indeed make a personal request to President Putin to refrain from striking Kyiv for a week until February 1 in order to create favourable conditions for negotiations," he said.
Asked to confirm that Putin had agreed, he said: "Yes of course, there was a personal request from President Trump."
It was not clear whether Peskov was using "Kyiv" to refer only to the capital city, where hundreds of apartments have been left without heat and power after Russian strikes during the war in Ukraine, or to denote the whole of the country.
Kyiv has said it will reciprocate if Moscow, which sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, forgoes strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.