Donald Trump has announced a surprise “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine, as he continues to pressure Kyiv to halt attacks on Russian oil refineries.
Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed it as “good news” after initially appearing to have been taken unawares – but he said Russia had already broken the deal.
On Sunday Trump, who is under domestic political pressure to reduce fuel prices that have soared after his attacks on Iran, wrote on social media “Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine. Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!”
As with last week’s announcement of a decision to relax sanctions to allow Russia to sell diesel, the White House did not give any detail beyond the brief lines on the president’s Truth Social account, posted before a political rally in Tennessee.
In his regular evening address on Sunday, Zelensky said “it is only logical to establish a ceasefire and stop the war, and Trump’s announcement of an energy ceasefire “is good news for everyone”
But, he said: “we are awaiting clear details of the dialogue between America and Russia”.
“Ukraine is ready to refrain from striking Russian energy infrastructure – and we count on the same readiness from Russia,” he said. “Unfortunately, Ukrainian skies have been infested with Russian shaheds [drones] all day today.”
He said “just now” Russia had attacked energy infrastructure in Kharkiv, and in the last week Russia had carried out more than 200 strikes on Ukraine’s electricity generation and transmission facilities and 17 strikes on gas and oil facilities.
“Ukraine has proposed many de-escalatory steps. Putin had one answer to all of them – ‘nyet’.”
Russia did not comment on the ceasefire deal on Sunday.
‘Many, many ceasefires’
The US has been increasing pressure on Ukraine to halt strikes on Russian energy sites, Reuters reported, and threatened to cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine as well as weapons procurement.
Jeffrey Price, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute at John Hopkins university, said it was “at least the third time” that that there had been an attempt at an energy ceasefire.
The most definitive was announced in March 2025, confirmed by both Russia and Ukraine, however both sides were accusing each other of breaching the agreement within days.
Price said it “remains to be seen” how Vladimir Putin would react to the latest announcement.
“His inclination is going to be to keep hitting Ukrainian infrastructure to basically freeze out the Ukrainian people [over winter] and seek to get an asymmetric relief from Ukraine’s strikes on his energy exporting infrastructure, which is paying for the war,” he told LBC.
“The experience with Putin is that he will take whatever he can get and you can’t really take to the bank his assurances. Any deal is really going to have to be judged on what happens on the ground, not what’s in social media or public announcements.”
Attacks on energy infrastructure are often against the rules of law, whether or not an official ceasefire is in effect.
Sonia Mycak, a research fellow in Ukrainian studies at the Australian National University, said Ukraine had proposed “many, many” ceasefires in the last few months, but Russia showed no indication it was prepared to de-escalate.
“People are suffering very, very heavily and [Kyiv] is now a frontline city being bombarded every few hours,” she told the ABC.
“All we’ve seen, really is the United States asking Ukraine to make concessions, wanting Ukraine to capitulate without putting any pressure on Russia.”
“We saw this with this diesel deal… Russia did not have to give up anything, any of its militaristic aims or goals in order to be able to sell this diesel.”
Trump’s diesel deal
Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, said oil markets were “hopeful” that something will come of the energy ceasefire, but not optimistic.
“We saw President Trump on September 14th announce a similar ceasefire on energy assets, and following that we continued to see Russia attack Ukrainian energy facilities, and Ukraine do significant damage to Russian refineries, and terminals,” he told the BBC.
He also played down the impact of Trump relaxing sanctions on Russian oil exports, as announced last week.
“A year ago, Russia was exporting 800,000 barrels a day of diesel, today it’s zero due to all the damage that Ukraine is inflicted on the Russian refining system,” he said. “So I’m pretty sceptical that we’re actually going to see large amounts of diesel fuel coming out of Russia to supply the world market.”
Zelensky said “everybody in the world” knew that the war in the Middle East was a bigger factor to blame for energy price rises, rather than Ukraine’s attacks on Russia.