Trump: Putin wants to end the Ukraine war

Speaking about a phone call he had with Putin on Friday, he added, "President Putin strongly wants to reach an end to the war."

Trump criticized the Ukrainian president for not holding elections since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, saying, "I think he should have held elections and could have settled this on several occasions."

Trump and Zelenskyy exchanged harsh criticism on Saturday following Washington's move to ease sanctions on Russian diesel.

Trump announced that he had contacted Putin and agreed to allow Moscow to offer large quantities of diesel on the global markets.

Ukraine and its European allies expressed discontent with this move, with Zelenskyy describing it as a "weak decision" in statements to journalists on Friday.

Asked on Saturday about these criticisms, Trump told journalists that Zelenskyy had disobeyed his orders not to strike Russian oil refineries.

He pointed out that these strikes exacerbate the global fuel shortage caused by the US-Israeli war on Iran.

For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on Sunday that his country is ready to stop targeting Russian oil refineries if Moscow halts its attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities, amid criticism from his American counterpart Donald Trump.

Tensions between the two presidents escalated on Friday, when Trump announced an agreement allowing Russia to pump large quantities of diesel into the global energy markets in exchange for easing sanctions on it.

Zelenskyy described the agreement as a "weak decision," arguing that it would encourage Russia to continue its attacks on Ukraine, but Trump blamed the Ukrainian strikes for the rise in fuel prices on Saturday.

Gasoline and diesel prices at American gas stations have risen sharply since late February, with Tehran closing the main Strait of Hormuz for Gulf oil exports after the war broke out.

Zelenskyy said in a post on the X platform, "Ukraine is ready to stop targeting Russian oil refineries if Russia stops targeting our energy infrastructure. Any steps to de-escalate must be mutual and supported by real guarantees."

Russia has launched waves of attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities since the start of its invasion in February 2022, causing power and heating outages for millions of people during the winter months.

DTEK, Ukraine's largest private energy provider, announced new power outages in the capital Kyiv on Sunday.

The dispute between Zelenskyy and Trump comes weeks before a US election expected to be fiercely contested, dominated by voters' concerns about rising living costs.

For its part, the Russian technology giant Yandex announced on Sunday that a Ukrainian drone attack damaged a data center belonging to it in the east of the capital.

Yandex, often described as "Google of Russia," operates the country's most popular search engine, as well as a food delivery app and a taxi service app used by tens of millions.

This attack, the third of its kind announced in a week, may indicate the start of a new retaliatory campaign by Kyiv targeting internet infrastructure in Russia, weeks after Moscow began targeting data centers in Ukraine.

The company stated on Telegram that "due to a drone attack, the infrastructure of Yandex's data center in the city of Vladimir was damaged. The data center operations have completely stopped."

It explained that the rest of the infrastructure resources are "unstable" and the platform is "disabled," while noting that the attack resulted in no injuries and repairs are ongoing.

Yandex had reported that its data center in Kaluga was damaged on Friday after its center in Sasovo was damaged on Thursday, with both cities located 150 kilometers southwest of Moscow and 300 kilometers southeast of it, respectively.

Over the past three weeks, the Russian army in Ukraine has targeted many data centers and infrastructure of internet and mobile service providers, leading to service disruptions.