U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy agreed on Wednesday to work together to end Russia’s war with Ukraine, in what the White House described as a “fantastic” one-hour phone call.

In their first conversation since an Oval Office shouting match on February 28, Zelenskiy thanked Trump for U.S. support and the two leaders agreed that technical teams would meet in Saudi Arabia in the coming days.

Zelenskiy asked Trump for more air defence support to protect his country against Russian attacks and the U.S. president said he would help locate the necessary military equipment in Europe, the White House said.

Trump briefed Zelenskiy on his phone call on Tuesday with Vladimir Putin, in which the Russian president rejected a proposed full 30-day ceasefire sought by Trump that Ukraine said it would be prepared to accept, but agreed to pause attacks on energy infrastructure.

That narrowly defined pause appeared in doubt on Wednesday, however, with Moscow saying Ukraine hit an oil depot in southern Russia while Kyiv said Russia had struck hospitals and homes, and knocked out power to some railways.

Still, the two sides carried out a prisoner exchange, each releasing 175 troops in a deal facilitated by the United Arab Emirates. Moscow said it freed an additional 22 wounded Ukrainians as a goodwill gesture.

Zelenskiy, describing his conversation with Trump as “positive, very substantive and frank,” said he had confirmed Kyiv’s readiness to halt strikes on Russian infrastructure and to accept an unconditional frontline ceasefire as the U.S. proposed earlier.

“One of the first steps toward fully ending the war could be ending strikes on energy and other civilian infrastructure. I supported this step, and Ukraine confirmed that we are ready to implement it,” he said on social media.

Later, the Ukrainian president told reporters in a video call that Trump understands Kyiv will not recognize occupied land as Russian.

Zelenskiy said the Russian strikes, which he said were carried out since Trump’s call with Putin, showed that Russia was not ready for peace. He said the U.S. should be in charge of monitoring any ceasefire, adding a halt to infrastructure attacks could be quickly established.

The Kremlin said it had called off planned attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, including by shooting down seven of Russia’s own drones heading towards Ukraine. It accused Kyiv of failing to call off its own attacks in what it called an attempt to sabotage the agreement.

Trump suggested to Zelenskiy the U.S. could help run, and possibly own, Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, according to a statement by the U.S. administration. Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, has been shut down since Russian troops occupied it in 2022.

Zelenskiy said Ukraine has begun talks with the U.S. about its possible involvement in restoring the Zaporizhzhia plant.

Trump has long promised to end Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War Two. But his outreach to Putin has unnerved European allies, who fear it heralds a fundamental shift after 80 years in which defending Europe from Russian expansionism was the core mission of U.S. foreign policy.

Some European leaders said Putin’s rejection of Trump’s proposed full truce was proof Moscow was not seeking peace. The offer to temporarily stop attacking Ukrainian energy facilities counted for “nothing” and Trump would have to win greater concessions, Germany’s defence minister said.

“Putin is playing a game here and I’m sure that the American president won’t be able to sit and watch for much longer,” Boris Pistorius told German broadcaster ZDF.

The EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said she would present a proposal to European leaders in Brussels on Thursday to provide Ukraine with 2 million rounds of large-calibre artillery ammunition, according to a letter seen by Reuters.

For most of the past three years, Russia has relentlessly attacked Ukraine’s power grid, arguing that civilian infrastructure is a legitimate target because it facilitates Kyiv’s fighting capabilities. Ukrainians say such attacks have subsided in recent months.

Kyiv has steadily developed capabilities to mount long-range attacks into Russia, frequently using drones to target distant oil and gas sites, which it says provide fuel for Russia’s troops and income to fund the war.

In the attacks overnight, Ukrainian regional authorities said Russian drones damaged two hospitals in the northeastern Sumy region, causing no injuries but forcing the evacuation of patients and staff.

Near Kyiv, a 60-year-old man was injured and airstrikes hit homes and businesses in the Bucha district north of the capital. Attacks damaged power systems for railways in Dnipropetrovsk in the south on Wednesday, the state railway said.

Authorities in the southern Russian region of Krasnodar said a Ukrainian drone attack caused a fire at an oil depot near the village of Kavkazskaya. No one was injured.

The depot is a rail terminal for Russian oil supplies to a pipeline linking Kazakhstan to the Black Sea. A representative of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium operator said oil flows were stable. Two industry sources said the attack could reduce Russian supplies to the pipeline.

Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to a proposal by U.S. President Donald Trump for Russia and Ukraine to stop attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure for 30 days and ordered the Russian military to cease them, the Kremlin said on Tuesday.

Russia has pounded Ukrainian energy installations and its electricity grid throughout the war, and Kyiv has responded with damaging strikes on refineries and fuel depots.

If implemented, Tuesday’s agreement would represent a genuine de-escalation in the three-year war. The Kremlin made no mention of Ukraine’s specific stance on the temporary halt in the targeting of energy infrastructure, but said Trump’s proposal had spoken of “a mutual refusal.”

The agreement fell short however of a wider agreement that the U.S. had sought, and which was accepted by Ukraine, for a blanket 30-day truce in the war.

“During the conversation, Donald Trump put forward a proposal for the parties to the conflict to mutually refrain from striking energy infrastructure facilities for 30 days. Vladimir Putin responded positively to this initiative and immediately gave the Russian military the corresponding command,” the Kremlin said in a statement.

On the proposed wider truce Putin reiterated concerns that he had raised last week, according to the Kremlin’s readout.

“The Russian side outlined a number of significant points regarding ensuring effective control over a possible ceasefire along the entire line of combat contact, the need to stop forced mobilisation in Ukraine, and the rearming of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” it said.

Putin also said that the key condition for resolving the conflict diplomatically should be “the complete cessation of foreign military assistance and provision of intelligence information to Kyiv”, the Kremlin added.

It said Putin had questioned Ukraine’s willingness to negotiate in good faith, and had accused it of carrying out “barbaric terrorist crimes” during a seven-month incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region.

Ukraine denies such atrocities, and similarly questions Russia’s trustworthiness and whether Moscow would respect any deal.

The Kremlin said the conversation between Putin and Trump had been a “detailed and frank exchange of views.”

It said Putin had underlined that a resolution of the conflict must be “comprehensive, sustainable and long-term” and take into account Russia’s own security interests and the root causes of the war.

Putin, it said, had also “responded constructively” to a Trump initiative on protecting shipping in the Black Sea and the two sides agreed to begin negotiations.

The Kremlin said that Russia and Ukraine would conduct another prisoner exchange on Wednesday, trading 175 people from each side.

Putin has said he wants Ukraine to drop its ambitions to join NATO, Russia to control the entirety of the four Ukrainian regions it has claimed as its own, and the size of the Ukrainian army to be limited.

He has also made clear he wants Western sanctions eased and a presidential election to be held in Ukraine, which Kyiv says is premature while martial law is in force.

The administration of President Donald Trump was consulted on Monday by Israel on its deadly strikes in Gaza, a White House spokesperson told Fox News’ “Hannity” show.

“The Trump administration and the White House were consulted by the Israelis on their attacks in Gaza tonight,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a Fox News interview.

Palestinian medics in Gaza reported dozens of people were killed in the aftermath of a series of the most violent air attacks by Israel on the Palestinian enclave since a ceasefire was reached on January 19 between Israel and Hamas militants.

A senior Hamas official said Israel had unilaterally overturned the ceasefire agreement, Reuters reported.

“As President Trump has made it clear – Hamas, the Houthis, Iran, all those who seek to terrorize not just Israel, but also the United States of America, will see a price to pay. All hell will break loose,” the White House spokesperson said.

Trump had previously publicly issued a warning using similar words, saying Hamas should release all hostages in Gaza or “let hell break out.”

The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7, 2023, when Palestinian Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages.

Israel’s subsequent military assault on Gaza has killed over 48,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, while also triggering accusations of genocide and war crimes that Israel denies. 

The assault has internally displaced nearly Gaza’s entire 2.3 million population and caused a hunger crisis.

Trump has also been condemned over his plan to displace Palestinians from Gaza and for the U.S. to take over the enclave. 

Rights groups, the U.N., Palestinians and Arab states have said Trump’s proposal, which he has put across as a re-development plan, would amount to ethnic cleansing.

Washington separately launched a new wave of airstrikes on Saturday in Yemen in which it said dozens of members of the Houthi movement were left dead. 

The Houthis said at least 53 people were killed. Reuters could not independently verify those casualty numbers.