Ukraine to Hold 'In-Depth' Talks on Foreign Troop Contingent Friday

MOSCOW, April 3 ------ Russia and Ukraine accused each other of launching new attacks against each other's energy facilities, in violation of a US-brokered moratorium. Both sides said they were providing details of the alleged violations to the United States, which got Moscow and Kyiv to agree the limited truce last month as a hoped-for stepping stone towards a full ceasefire. Russia's defense ministry said Ukraine had conducted drone and shelling attacks in the western Kursk region that cut off power to over 1,500 households.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a Russian drone hit an energy substation in Sumy region and artillery fire damaged a power line in Dnipropetrovsk, cutting off electricity to nearly 4,000 consumers. The administration of US President Donald Trump is impatient with both sides to move faster towards ending the three-year war.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the fact that President Vladimir Putin had agreed the energy truce was evidence he was serious about engaging in a peace process - something that Kyiv and some of its European allies dispute. Peskov said that Moscow would keep working with the Americans despite what he called daily Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.

Zelensky said on Tuesday that Russia was breaking the energy truce and called on the US to boost sanctions against Moscow, as Trump has threatened to do. Ukraine said last month it was willing to accept a full 30-day ceasefire but Putin declined to agree to that, raising a series of questions about how it would be monitored and concerns that Ukraine would use the breathing space to mobilize more soldiers and acquire more weapons from the West.

Source: channelnewsasia.com