Peskov: Russia Did Not Break Trump’s ‘Energy Truce’ Because Terms Were Never Set

The Kremlin claimed that Russia cannot be accused of breaking the US President Donald Trump’s abrupt energy truce because its terms were never set, hours after Russian strikes cut power to at least 600,000 Ukrainian citizens.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov made the remarks on Wednesday, Oct. 14, when asked about Russia’s overnight attacks on Ukraine’s power grid.

“The energy truce proposed by Trump was not specified, so it cannot be said that Russia is not complying with it,” Peskov said according to the Russian news outlet Astra.

Moscow names Kyiv, Kharkiv power plants as targets

Russia’s Defense Ministry said that its forces used ground-based precision weapons and long-range attack drones against energy and communications facilities it claimed were serving Ukraine’s military and defense industry.

The ministry listed the Darnytsia CHP-4 and CHP-5 combined heat and power plants in Kyiv, as well as CHP-6, the Trypillia thermal power plant and a major electrical substation in Kyiv region.

In the Kharkiv region, the ministry named the Kharkiv CHP-5 and the Zmiiv thermal power plant.

It also claimed to have hit a UKRSIBBANK data center, alleging without evidence that it was used to gather intelligence on Russian forces.

Ukrainian authorities confirmed that Russian ballistic missiles struck Kyiv’s CHP-4 power plant and a nine-story residential building late Tuesday, Oct. 13, killing at least three people and injuring 26, including an eight-year-old child.

Other Topics of Interest

Two Veterans With Prosthetic Legs Conquer 6,476-Meter Himalayan Peak in Tribute to Ukraine’s Defenders

After each lost a leg in combat, Christopher Greenwood and Roman Havryliak trained for more than a year before tackling Mera Peak in Nepal.

According to Ukraine’s Air Force, Russia launched 39 missiles and 128 drones in the attack, which began at 6 p.m. local time. Air defenses downed four missiles and 115 drones.

Zelensky continues pressing Washington for sanctions

Zelensky called the strike deliberate, saying it damaged 26 sites in Ukraine’s power system and four oil and gas facilities, and warned of further outages.

“Russia does not view the US President’s statements as strong,” Zelensky said.

He urged Trump to impose “STRONG sanctions” on Moscow under the sanctions law named after the late Senator Lindsey Graham, and asked for more Patriot interceptors; the only weapons system that can successfully deter Russia’s ballistic missiles.

Strains between Kyiv and Washington have continued to grow throughout this week.

For the second night in a row, Ukraine received no early warning from Western partners about incoming ballistic missiles.

The lapse followed reports that US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner warned Ukraine’s delegation at talks in Miami on Friday, Oct. 9 that Washington could cut off intelligence sharing if Kyiv kept striking Russian refineries.

Trump’s administration reportedly also warned it could suspend the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) – a mechanism that enables European purchases of US weapons for Ukraine, the main channel for buying Patriot interceptors.

US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker denied the claims, saying that no change has been made.

Meanwhile, Trump has denied that the US stopped sharing intelligence with Kyiv and Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha confirmed that cooperation with Washington continues, although neither disclosed whether the scope of intelligence sharing had changed.

How the truce claim unfolded

Following a telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday, Oct. 9, Trump announced that the US struck a diesel arrangement with the Kremlin.

Shortly after, the US Treasury Department issued a license authorizing the sale and import of Russian diesel through April 7, 2027.

On Sunday, Oct. 11, Trump announced that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to stop striking each other’s energy infrastructure, without an official response from neither Ukraine nor Russia.

Although Ukraine signalled willingness to abide by the truce and refrained from striking Russia’s facilities, Russia continued its attacks on Ukraine nationwide.

Trump insisted that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an energy ceasefire because he told them to, despite neither government confirming such a deal. “They agreed. You know why? Because I said, ‘You agree’ – that’s why,” he told reporters on Monday.

On Tuesday, 12 US senators – six Republicans and six Democrats – signed a joint letter urging Trump to rescind the diesel deal and enforce the new Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, which grants him the power to sanction Russia and buyers of its energy with tariffs of up to 500%. The senators called the deal “a betrayal” of Ukraine and argued it only helps Russia’s aggression.

The bill was signed into law by Trump just three weeks before he struck the deal with the Kremlin leader.

On the same day that Trump announced the deal, a bipartisan US delegation was in Kyiv, backing expansion of Ukraine’s access to SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network and urging an effort to win over the company’s owner, Elon Musk.

However, Musk did the opposite and imposed speed restrictions on Starshield, the military version of Starlink used by Ukraine’s military, without prior warning overnight on Oct. 13-14. The cap cuts connections for terminals moving faster than 100 miles per hour (160 kilometers per hour).