A Russian soldier in a military vehicle at the Luhansk Power Station in Schastia, Ukraine, 2022. Photo: EPA-EFE/SERGEI ILNITSKY
Russia and Ukraine are holding “preliminary discussions” on ending attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure, The Financial Times (FT) reported on Tuesday, citing anonymous sources.
According to the sources, which included senior Ukrainian officials, Kyiv is eager to resume the Qatar-mediated negotiations that took place between the two countries over the summer before reportedly being derailed by the Armed Forces of Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s southwestern Kursk region in August.
One diplomat told the FT that “very early talks” were now underway on a possible cessation of strikes on energy facilities in what the newspaper described as the “most significant de-escalation” of hostilities since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
While both countries have scaled back attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure in recent weeks following an “understanding reached by their intelligence agencies”, the FT wrote, until an agreement can be reached, Kyiv intends to keep striking Russia’s energy facilities to pressure Moscow into further talks, the FT cited one senior Ukrainian official as saying.
However, Vladimir Putin is unlikely to agree to any deal to end the strikes “as long as the Ukrainians are trampling the land in Kursk”, a former senior Kremlin official said.
Earlier in October, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the FT that an agreement between Moscow and Kyiv to end strikes on each other’s power grids could pave the way for eventual negotiations to end the war.
“We saw during the first [peace] summit that there could be a decision on energy security. In other words: we do not attack their energy infrastructures, they don’t attack ours. Could this lead to the end of the war’s hot phase? I think so”, Zelensky said.
According to four Ukrainian officials who spoke to the FT, the two countries reached a “tacit agreement” not to strike each other’s energy infrastructure in the autumn of 2023, but Moscow deemed that agreement to have been broken when Kyiv resumed strikes on Russian oil hubs in spring, ramping up its attacks on Ukrainian power plants in response.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry previously denied that it had been in negotiations with Kyiv over ending strikes on energy facilities over summer, saying that the only communication between Russia and Ukraine was carried out via intermediaries and related solely to humanitarian issues, primarily the exchange of prisoners.