Russia and Ukraine appeared to have stopped targeting each other’s energy infrastructure this week, although the details of an agreement reached on Sunday were still being worked out.
“I can confirm that since this date, March 25 … there have been no attacks on energy objects. Neither Russian attacks on our energy objects, or our attacks on Russian energy objects,” Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Heorhii Tykhyi told the Kyiv Independent on Thursday.
In reaching the partial ceasefire agreement, the United States appeared to abandon the comprehensive ceasefire proposal it agreed with Ukraine on March 11.
Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected it a week later during a phone call with US President Donald Trump, and negotiated a vaguely defined ceasefire on energy and infrastructure instead, to which Ukraine was not a party.
The US brought Ukraine on board with the smaller agreement in Jeddah after shuttling between Ukrainian and Russian negotiating teams.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had said on Sunday evening that “a ceasefire in our energy sector can begin today”.
Russia earlier accused Ukraine of violating the ceasefire.
“Despite Zelensky’s public statement … the [Kyiv] regime continued to strike at the energy infrastructure of the Russian Federation,” said Russia’s Ministry of Defence.
It accused Ukraine of launching two attack drones over Crimea on Wednesday night targeting an underground gas storage facility, and of launching another drone against a high-tension power line in the Russian regions of Bryansk and Kursk, causing a cascade of blackouts.
The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces denied those attacks.
“The military department of the aggressor country spreads false and groundless accusations in order to prolong the war,” they said.
The governors of Crimea, Kursk and Bryansk did not report Ukrainian UAVs in their airspace, as they usually do.
Russia has been on a diplomatic messaging offensive over the past 10 days, accusing Ukraine of violating ceasefires it had not agreed to.
On Friday it accused Ukraine of blowing up a gas measuring station in Sudzha, in Russia’s Kursk region.
Ukraine’s General Staff said Sudzha was “shelled by the Russians themselves” in a “campaign to discredit Ukraine”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov fired back. Ukraine’s denial “shows how much one can trust the Kyiv regime”, he said.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova piled on, too.
Ukraine has “already violated the truce proposed by the United States with an attack on the Russian power facility. Now the question is how Washington will continue to be managed with the ‘mad terrorist scum’.”
Sudzha is the point where a major Russian gas pipeline crosses into Ukraine.
The pipeline was essentially defunct after Russia drastically reduced gas flows to Europe in 2022, and was completely shut down on December 31, when a transit contract between Russia and Ukraine expired.
Ukraine had abundant opportunity to destroy or shut down Russian gas pipelines crossing its territory throughout three years of war but has not done so.