Ukrainian officials said Monday that Russia has continued to strike Ukraine’s energy facilities even after US President Donald Trump announced a day earlier that the warring countries had agreed on an “energy ceasefire” in the 4 1/2-year-old war.
A Monday statement from the Regional Prosecutor’s Office of Kharkiv in northeastern Ukraine said Russian forces had attacked an energy facility on the outskirts of the city. That came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday that while he “welcomed” Trump’s announcement, Russia was still hitting energy infrastructure in the capital Kyiv and in Kharkiv.
Trump’s brief social media post on Sunday announcing the purported agreement to mutually cease attacks on energy sites said only that the ceasefire took effect immediately, adding: “Do not break it!”
Trump had also claimed in a social media post on September 14 that both countries had agreed “not to hit” each other’s energy infrastructure, but offered no details on that proposal either and nothing came of the purported agreement.
Russia has used attacks on energy facilities in order to deny Ukrainian civilians power, heat and running water during the war, hoping to wear down public resistance to Moscow’s full-scale operation.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has leveled strikes against Russian energy sites like oil refineries, sometimes deep within Russian territory. That’s prompted Trump to blame Zelenskyy for high diesel prices in the US only weeks before its midterm elections.
Moscow did not immediately comment on the purported deal.
Zelenskyy said Kyiv was ready to comply with Trump’s requests to stop striking Russian refineries if Moscow halted attacks on Ukraine’s energy system, and he asked Trump to press the Kremlin to agree.
