The leaders of Finland and Norway speak by phone with Vladimir Putin

The President of Finland and the Norwegian Prime Minister have spoken by telephone with the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin has confirmed this and the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Putin, has later announced that he has also spoken with the leaders of the aforementioned countries after the call to Russia.

A local ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia came into effect early Tuesday, ahead of the start of a humanitarian mission managed by US first lady Melania Trump, as Moscow resumed its missile attacks on kyiv.

The pause in fighting began at 3 a.m. to allow the aid mission to enter Oleshky, a Russian-occupied town in southern Ukraine, this week.

According to her office, Melania Trump led talks with Russian and Ukrainian civilian negotiators after meeting with United Nations officials, who briefed her on the situation there.

The aid mission is planned before a new round of talks between Moscow and kyiv, mediated by the United States, which are scheduled for next month and which aim to end the war after more than 4 and a half years of fighting.

Some 2,000 people are trapped in Oleshky, where food and medicine supplies are increasingly scarce. They have not been able to leave due to the presence of explosive mines and drone attacks in the area, according to the UN.

Russian and Ukrainian negotiators, as well as the armies of both countries, confirmed in separate statements the beginning of the ceasefire.

That truce is expected to last until Saturday, or perhaps longer, amid deep mistrust between Russia and Ukraine that has thwarted previous attempts.

Minutes after 3 in the morning, the impact of several ballistic missile explosions shook kyiv while anti-aircraft alerts sounded in different parts of the country.

The Ukrainian capital also came under attack on Monday night, when Russian ballistic missiles caused damage to the grounds of a university, leaving one dead and 10 injured, municipal officials reported. In Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, authorities said overnight attacks on Monday left two people dead and four others wounded.

"It is important for the world to see that Russia shows nothing more than a desire to kill and continue waging war," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote in an online post shortly afterward.

Oleshky is located in Kherson, a partially Russian-occupied region about 550 kilometers (340 miles) southeast of kyiv, where the Dnieper River separates the two nations' forces.

It was captured by Kremlin forces on the first day of their invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The city suffered another calamity in June 2023, when a flood overwhelmed it after a dam burst.

Oleshky is located on the side of the Dnieper River on the opposite bank of the city of Kherson, the administrative capital of the region of the same name. Russian forces seized Kherson in the early days of the 2022 invasion, but retreated across the river several months later.

Negotiators involved in the aid mission to Oleshky said it would include doctors, medicine, water and food supplies, before evacuation corridors are opened.