Donald Trump says Vladimir Putin has agreed to stop attacking Ukrainian cities for a week due to "extraordinary cold" weather.

Ukraine is already suffering from the coldest winter in a decade but temperatures are expected to fall another ten degrees in the coming days to below -30°C.

Russian strikes on Ukraine's energy grid have crippled the power supply to major cities and left millions without heating and electricity.

A lot of progress was made in December on peace talks to end the conflict. Following the key Mar-a-Lago meeting on December 28 progress has stalled as the two sides remain stuck over the question of territorial control.

The talks have continued at the Abu Dhabi meeting that kicked off on January 24, the first time that all three of Russia, Ukraine and the US have sat round the same table since the war began some four years ago.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on January 29 he expected the agreement by Russia not to fire on Kyiv and other cities for a week because of the intense winter weather.

"Our teams discussed this in the United Arab Emirates. We expect the agreements to be implemented," Zelenskiy wrote on social media. "De-escalation steps contribute to real progress toward ending the war."

Zelenskiy expressed his thanks to Washington for brokering the temporary ceasefire. Trump did not give a start or end date for the ceasefire. Despite the announced deal, Russia continued to hit Ukraine on the night of January 29 with a powerful Iskander cruise missile and a wave of drones with no sign of a ceasefire yet.

Both Russia and Ukraine seemed surprised by Trump’s public announcement of the agreement.

Two recent Russian missile and drone strikes left 1.3mn people in Kyiv without power and more than 6,000 buildings without heating, according to Reuters.

Trump also claimed he had informed Ukrainian officials about the ceasefire. “Ukraine … almost didn’t believe it but they were very happy about it,” Trump said.

Some analysts have speculated that Putin agreed to the temporary halt as Russia needs time to restock. Since the start of his missile war phase of the conflict this summer, the Kremlin has tripled the number of drones and missiles it is using against Ukraine and recent reports suggest that missiles are being taken directly from the production lines of the factories deep in the interior and being fired the same week on targets in Ukraine. With stocks running low, Russia can use a pause to rebuild its stocks of missile, before resuming its intense attacks, keeping the pressure on Bankova to roll over on the issue of giving up control of Donbas as part of a settlement.

For the meantime, Zelenskiy is taking the deal at face value, albeit with caveat that he wants to see results, and quickly responded on social media.

"Thanks to the American side for their efforts in ensuring a stop to strikes on energy (targets) at this time and let's hope that America succeeds in ensuring this," he said in his nightly address.  "We shall see what the real situation is with our energy facilities and cities in the days and nights to come."

As a big freeze settles over the world thanks to icy polar air spilling out from the Arctic to cause snowstorms around the world, Putin has been taking advantage of the low temperatures to try and freeze Ukraine into submission. The Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) has been raining down a relentless barrage of missiles and drones, targeting power stations and the ultra-high voltage 750kV substations as well as gas transit and other energy infrastructure that has turned out lights and crippled heat supplies in homes across Ukraine.

Some 378 multi-storey buildings in Ukraine's capital still remain without heat, Kyiv's mayor Vitali Klitschko said on social media on January 29.

"Yesterday the first 100 buildings in Troyeschyna were reconnected to heating. Tonight, another 50 were connected," Klitschko said, admitting the situation was “critical.” "Public utilities and energy companies continue to work in various districts of the capital to restore heat supply to the homes of Kyiv residents."

Despite the proposed respite from the Russian bombing, the damage has already been done and it will take weeks to repair most of the damage.  Some homes have already gone up to 30 hours without power at a time, while hundreds have no heat whatsoever just as temperatures outside dip to -20C, with an ever colder snap to come, according to meteorologists. Ukraine's state weather agency forecast a drastic dip in temperatures to as low as -30C in coming days.

In response to the crisis, authorities have opened 1,300 so-called "invincibility points" – heated shelters in the courtyards of apartment blocks – where women, children and the infirm can warm up and charge their phones. Men have been excluded from the tents and risk being snatched by recruitment teams if they use them.

Despite the ceasefire, a humanitarian crisis is looming. Klitschko has already called on residents of the capital to leave, if they can, and some 600,000 people have now done so, according to the mayor’s office.

The deal was done in a phone call between Putin and Trump on January 29. Trump said during a cabinet meeting he asked Putin to suspend his attack for one-week due to the "extraordinary cold" and that Putin had "agreed to do that".

"It was very nice. A lot of people said, 'Don't waste the call. You're not going to get that.' And he did it. And we're very happy that they did it," Trump added. The Ukrainians, he said, "almost they didn't believe it, but they were very happy about it because they are struggling badly".

Last week during the Davos conference Maxim Timchenko, CEO of DTEK, Ukraine’s biggest power company, said the country is nearing a "humanitarian catastrophe" after months of Russian airstrikes on energy systems and any future peace deal must include a halt to attacks on energy infrastructure.

The Abu Dhabi meeting is due to continue this weekend, but in a bilateral format without the participation of US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced this week. All sides have admitted that the status of the Donbas is now the central issue in the talks.

However, Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s top foreign policy advisor, rejected assertions by Trump’s envoy Witkoff and Rubio, that the only issue left to resolve between Kyiv and Moscow to end the war concerned control over Ukrainian territory in the Donbas region.

“The territorial issue is the most important issue but many other issues remain on the agenda,” Ushakov said. Asked about a mooted US security guarantees deal announced on January 26 in the event of a ceasefire, Ushakov said: “No one agreed on this… We held the first round of negotiations within the framework of the security working groups. That’s where we are,” he added.