Russia hammers Ukraine after halt announced by Trump, plunging thousands into frigid dark on eve of talks

Kyiv — It was another frigid morning without power in Dorohozhychi, a neighborhood in the northwest of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv. Between Monday night and Tuesday morning, Russian drones and missiles battered energy facilities across Kyiv as temperatures dropped to minus 7 degrees Fahrenheit. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it was the first Russian attack on Kyiv’s energy infrastructure since President Trump announced during a Jan. 29 cabinet meeting that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, had agreed to pause strikes on Ukrainian towns and cities for a week.The five day respite, according to engineers working on a damaged electrical substation in Dorohozhychi Tuesday morning, was not long enough. “Since there is currently severe frost outside, the load on the power grids and on the equipment is increasing, and it is wearing out,” Maxim Yevchuk, an engineer with DTEK, Ukraine’s largest private electricity provider, told CBS News. Yevchuk and his crew managed to repair the substation in Dorohozhychi, but they expected to face similar problems in other Kyiv neighborhoods throughout the day. The underlying issues behind the long power outages, they said, will persist regardless of the intensity of Russian strikes.”Almost every day we have an emergency like this,” Yevchuk said, explaining that the combination of Russian attacks and extreme weather have overwhelmed the country’s power grid.Because of the overload, he said, minor technical failures “now lead to power outages for entire neighborhoods.”  Energy truce ends on eve of peace talksDiscussion of an “energy truce” — with both sides stopping attacks on each other’s power infrastructure — emerged after the first trilateral peace negotiations held among Ukrainian, Russian and American officials in Abu Dhabi at the end of January. President Trump announced during a cabinet meeting following the summit that he had asked Putin to pause strikes on energy infrastructure, and that the Russian leader had agreed. “Our teams discussed this in the United Arab Emirates,” Zelenskyy said in a social media post weeks ago. We expect the agreements to be implemented. De-escalation steps contribute to real progress toward ending the war.”Now, as Ukrainian, Russian, and American officials plan to return to Abu Dhabi for a second round of trilateral negotiations, currently scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, the mood has shifted. Russia launched 450 drones and more than 60 missiles at Ukraine overnight into Tuesday, according to Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, who said the strikes had left 1,170 apartment buildings in Kyiv without heating. Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the strikes showed that “attitudes in Moscow have not changed: they continue to bet on war and the destruction of Ukraine, and they do not take diplomacy seriously. The work of our negotiating team will be adjusted accordingly.”NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte echoed Zelenskyy’s sentiments during a visit to Kyiv on Tuesday, telling members of Ukraine’s parliament that, “Russian attacks like those last night, do not signal seriousness about peace.”There was no immediate response from Moscow to the criticism.Both Rutte and Zelenskyy emphasized Ukraine’s capacity to endure the war’s harshest months. “Putin has long thought he could wait us out, that Ukraine was weak, that your supporters would grow weary, that our will would falter,” Rutte said in his address. “He was gravely mistaken. Ukraine is strong, and our support is unwavering.” As the energy crisis deepens, public opinion surveys conducted in Ukraine appear to support Rutte’s assessment of the nation’s resolve. A poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology from January 23-29 found that 65% of Ukrainian respondents said they were, “ready to endure war for as long as necessary” to secure what they perceive as a fair peace.According to DTEK, Monday night’s attack was the worst so far in 2026, and the 12th major attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in the last four months alone. Yevchuk said, for his crew, the work “does not change from attack to attack.”They remain focused on the same task every day: “We continue to do whatever is necessary so that our customers receive as much power as possible.”

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