Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced on Monday, at the Warsaw Security Forum, that Russia attacked Ukrainian energy infrastructure during the night of October 11 to 12, just hours after Donald Trump declared a ceasefire on energy between the two countries, and described those attacks as violations of the truce announced by Washington.
Zelenski's statements coincided with a statement from the state gas operator Naftogaz Ukraine in which the company reported that a Russian jet-powered drone struck a gas production facility in the Kharkiv region that same night, causing a fire and damage to critical equipment.
According to Naftogaz, the employees were in shelters at the time of the attack and there were no injuries.
The interim CEO of the company, Sergii Fedorenko, was quoted in the statement saying: "The critical equipment was damaged in the attack. Our employees are doing everything possible to address the consequences of the strike as quickly as possible and to avoid risks to the stable operation of the energy system."
This gas plant is a separate facility from the CHP-5 thermal power plant in Kharkiv, which had already been attacked on Sunday, October 11, as reported by Zelenski in earlier statements included in the coverage of Trump's announcement.
In his speech before the Polish forum, Zelenski also stated that the Russian refineries did not burn that night, while Ukraine was indeed hit. These are statements from one side of the conflict, without independent verification from either side.
The Ukrainian leader also demanded that any real energy ceasefire include the power grid and generation facilities, not just oil refineries. He argued that Ukraine has only one refinery—the Kremenchuk one, which has been out of operation since April 2022 due to Russian attacks—and that an agreement limited to such facilities would be structurally asymmetric.
On Sunday the 11th, Trump had posted on social media that there was an energy ceasefire "effective immediately" and that both parties had agreed to it, without attaching any text of the agreement or verification mechanism. Zelensky noted that same day that the announcement took him by surprise and conditioned Ukraine’s compliance on Russian reciprocity.
An official U.S. source cited by Axios indicated on Monday that Trump's initial proposal only referred to oil refineries, and that a broader scope regarding the power grid could be negotiated at a later stage.
Moscow, for its part, did not confirm any agreement. The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitri Peskov, merely stated that "contacts are ongoing," without specifying whether a possible truce would include refineries or other critical infrastructures. The Russian Foreign Minister, Serguéi Lavrov, criticized the idea of an energy truce, arguing that Europe could take advantage of it to send more weapons to Ukraine.
As of the date of this publication, there is no agreed-upon and published text that allows for determining the actual scope of the understanding between Washington and Moscow, nor is there a primary response from either capital that clarifies whether the proposal includes all energy facilities or just oil refineries.
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