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Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn’t changed his order not to strike energy infrastructure in Ukraine despite reports of Ukrainian hits on Russian energy assets, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday.
“So far, there have been no other orders from the president,” Peskov told Russian reporters who asked him if Russia intended to keep its moratorium on energy infrastructure strikes or not.
“Our armed forces are following all instructions of the supreme commander-in-chief, but of course we are monitoring the situation very closely,” the Kremlin spokesman said.
Last week, Putin agreed to impose a 30-day suspension on attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure in exchange for an identical halt of attacks on Russian infrastructure from the Ukrainian side.
The commitment was made during Putin’s two-and-a-half-hour phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump during which the two discussed the next steps in the Ukraine war. A full 30-day ceasefire, as originally proposed by the U.S. side, was rejected by Russia, which sees it as a means of giving the Ukrainian army a break to rearm. One of Russia’s conditions for a peace agreement is the suspension of all U.S. military aid to the Kyiv government.
However, hours after the Putin-Trump call, Russia and Ukraine traded accusations of hits on the energy infrastructure of the other.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russia hit energy infrastructure in Ukraine just hours after President Vladimir Putin told President Trump he would halt such strikes, as he warned of a “long path” to a ceasefire in the war in Ukraine.
Two days later, Russia and Ukraine accused each other of attacking the Sudzha natural gas pumping station in a border area with intense clashes and retreating Ukrainian troops. The Sudzha facility is on Russian territory which Ukraine captured in an offensive last year but which Russia has reclaimed in recent weeks.
