Germany says ‘Putin playing a game’ after new Ukraine strikes

BERLIN: Germany accused President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday of “playing a game” after Kyiv reported Russian strikes on Ukranian civilian infrastructure hours after Moscow agreed to temporarily pause attacks on energy facilities.

“We’ve seen that attacks on civilian infrastructure have not eased at all in the first night after this supposedly ground-breaking, great phone call” between Putin and US President Donald Trump, German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said in a TV interview.

“Putin is playing a game.”

“The American president has a responsibility for one of the great nations of the world. And I am very sure that there will come a time when he will have to react,” Pistorius added.

In the 90-minute call with Trump on Tuesday, Putin agreed to a scaled-back commitment to halt attacks on energy infrastructure for 30 days, but refused a full ceasefire in its three-year war with Ukraine.

Following the fresh strikes, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Moscow of effectively rejecting the US-backed truce proposal, which Kyiv had previously accepted.

Pistorius said Putin’s commitment to stop attacks on energy targets was “basically nothing” because such infrastructure in Ukraine was already the “best protected”.

The minister also described as “unacceptable” the Kremlin’s insistence that a “key condition” for peace would be a total halt of Western military and intelligence support to Ukraine’s embattled military.

“This is very transparent,” Pistorius said, adding that Putin aimed to prevent Kyiv’s backers from “further supporting Ukraine and enabling it to really defend itself if there is another attack, during or after a ceasefire”.

-AFP