Ukraine and Russia, brokered by Qatar, have resumed talks on ending attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure, people familiar with the matter told the Financial Times.
“There are very early talks about possibly restarting something,” a diplomat familiar with the situation told the newspaper. Senior Ukrainian officials say Kiev wants to return to an agreement that was close to being reached before the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) invaded the Kursk region. They noted that Moscow and Kyiv have already reduced the frequency of attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure in recent weeks as part of an agreement between the two countries’ intelligence agencies.
However, Russian President Vladimir Putin is unlikely to agree to a deal until Russian troops push Ukrainian troops out of the Kursk region, where they control about 600 square kilometers, a former senior Kremlin official said. “While [the Ukrainians] are trampling the ground in Kursk, Putin will be hitting [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky’s energy infrastructure,” the FT source said.
To put pressure on the Russian government and force it to negotiate, Ukraine plans to continue to strike oil refineries, a senior Ukrainian official said. He said that apart from drone attacks, Kiev “has no significant leverage to [force the Russians] to negotiate.”
According to the FT, in the fall of 2023, Kyiv and Moscow had already entered into a “tacit agreement” not to strike each other’s energy facilities. As a result, Russia refrained from large-scale attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure last winter, which it had in 2022-2023. But the Kremlin considered these agreements to be violated due to the drone strikes on oil refineries, the publication’s sources said.
In response to the drone attacks, Russia has stepped up long-range missile strikes on Ukraine’s energy sector. In September, Zelensky said the Russian army had destroyed all thermal power plants and a significant portion of hydroelectric power station capacity. According to him, the country’s energy system is 80% destroyed and millions of Ukrainians could be left without heat this coming winter.