Ukraine and Russia discuss stopping air strikes on energy facilities
Ukraine and Russia: According to the media report, which cited anonymous sources with knowledge of the situation, Ukraine and Russia are in the early phases of talks over possibly stopping attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure.
According to sources the FT cited late Tuesday, including top Ukrainian officials, Ukraine was looking to restart negotiations that were mediated by Qatar and had almost reached a deal in August.
The sources told the FT that Kyiv’s soldiers’ foray into Russia’s Kursk region, which borders Ukraine that month had ruined the negotiations.
The Financial Times quoted a diplomat who was informed on the discussions as stating, “There are very early talks about potentially restarting something.” “The energy facilities are currently being discussed.”
Reuters was unable to confirm the information on its own. Requests for comment from Reuters were not immediately answered by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, the Kremlin, the Russian Defense Ministry, or the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
The FT said that neither Zelenskiy’s office nor the Kremlin had replied to its requests for comment.
Since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine’s smaller neighbor in 2022, Russian strikes on energy infrastructure have damaged or taken control of a significant portion of Ukraine’s power capacity, leaving Kyiv to depend on its nuclear power plants and imports of energy from Europe.
Last month, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said that Russia had destroyed more than half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, or gigawatts. In reference to planned EU-funded repairs, she said that the European Union sought to restore 2.5 GW of capacity, or around 15% of the nation’s demands.
At the beginning of the conflict, Ukraine lacked strong long-range weaponry. However, it has subsequently created long-range attack drones and deployed them to strike targets deep into Russia, including military airfields, power stations, and oil refineries.
Earlier in October, Zelenskiy told the FT that an agreement to safeguard energy assets may indicate that Russia is open to more extensive peace negotiations. Although Moscow claims to desire peace, Kyiv finds the circumstances it has established intolerable.
