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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is pushing back on President Donald Trump’s claim that Russia and Ukraine have agreed to stop attacking each other’s energy infrastructure, saying Kyiv has received no reliable guarantee that Moscow will stop its strikes.
Trump announced Monday that both sides had agreed to halt the attacks, writing on Truth Social: “Ukraine has agreed not to hit Russian Energy targets. Russia has agreed to do, likewise!”
But Zelenskyy quickly cast doubt on whether an agreement had actually been reached.
“Ukraine is not certain that Russia is willing to stick to any agreement,” Zelenskyy said, adding that Kyiv would stop its attacks if its partners could guarantee Moscow would halt strikes against Ukraine’s electricity network, energy facilities and other critical infrastructure.
The Ukrainian leader had made a similar point days earlier, warning that Kyiv intends to retaliate if Russia again tries to cripple Ukraine’s power grid.
“Russia knows that if they strike — and they are preparing to strike our energy system — Russia will face the same in return,” Zelenskyy said. “If they cause blackouts for us, we will try to respond appropriately.”
The warning comes as Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign is inflicting mounting damage on Russia’s oil industry.
Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged this month that Moscow initially underestimated the threat to its refineries.
Speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum, Putin said Russian authorities had assumed refineries would not be targeted because they were civilian facilities, according to the Kyiv Post.
Putin later said Russia still had about 10% of its damaged refinery capacity left to repair and acknowledged Moscow had been forced to dramatically increase protection around the facilities.
“Just last night, there were fresh attempts to strike three oil refineries,” Putin said Sept. 2. “They failed, because the facilities are already protected.”
The admission followed months of increasingly damaging Ukrainian attacks.
Ukraine has doubled its attacks on Russian refineries this year, according to Reuters, forcing full or partial shutdowns and reducing production of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
A June strike temporarily halted operations at the Moscow region’s largest fuel supplier after damaging a primary refining unit responsible for more than half of the plant’s capacity.
The campaign has accelerated.
Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces struck refineries in Russia’s Ryazan region, Perm region and Tatarstan on Sept. 7.
Days later, Ukrainian forces hit the Slavyansk refinery in Krasnodar and the TANEKO refinery in Tatarstan, according to Ukraine’s General Staff.
The strikes have contributed to gasoline shortages in parts of Russia and forced Moscow to strengthen defenses around key energy facilities. The Kremlin said Monday that it welcomed Trump’s appeal for Ukraine to stop attacking Russian diesel infrastructure.
Trump had publicly urged Zelenskyy a day earlier to stop the refinery campaign.
“Mr. Zelenskyy has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump said Sunday, arguing that the strikes were contributing to a global diesel shortage. “Let him go after targets but not diesel fuel.”
Zelenskyy, however, has framed the attacks as retaliation for Russia’s continuing campaign against Ukrainian infrastructure.
“Every day, Ukrainian energy facilities, port infrastructure, logistics, even food and pharmaceutical warehouses become targets,” Zelensky said in an X post. “The war must be ended. And a de-escalation step regarding critical infrastructure could be a first step toward peace.”
His position leaves the proposed energy truce dependent on Moscow: Ukraine says it is prepared to stop striking Russian energy targets — but only if Russia demonstrably stops first.
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