Ukraine says refinery strikes will stop only if Russia stops hitting its grid

Ukraine told Europe’s main security body on Thursday that it would stop striking Russian oil refineries only when Russia stopped attacking Ukraine’s power stations and lines, setting out its terms days after a US-announced pause on energy strikes collapsed.

“We are ready to stop strikes on Russian oil refineries provided that Russia stops attacking” Ukraine’s energy system, Yurii Vitrenko, Ukraine’s permanent representative to the international organisations in Vienna, told the OSCE Permanent Council.

Vitrenko said Russia had carried out more than 200 strikes on electricity generation and transmission facilities in the past week, along with 17 attacks on gas and oil infrastructure. He said a missile attack on Kyiv, the Kyiv region and the Kharkiv region on 14 October damaged 30 energy facilities and left about 600,000 people without power.

Russia kept up those attacks, he said, after President Donald Trump announced his “energy truce” initiative on 11 October. Without reciprocal steps from Moscow, “there can be no meaningful progress toward a ceasefire,” Vitrenko said. “The only obstacle remains Russia’s refusal to halt its attacks and engage meaningfully in de-escalation.”

Another day of drones

The attacks went on as he spoke. Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 138 attack drones between 7:30 am and 6 pm local time on Thursday, 90 of them jet-powered, and that 125 were shot down or jammed. In Kyiv’s Pecherskyi district, seven people were hurt when a drone came down between apartment blocks. In the Odesa region, a drone hit a shop and injured four.

By the evening President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in Brussels for the EU summit, put the day’s toll at 52 injured across the country. “The Russians are using Shaheds almost constantly,” he said, listing a shop, a pharmaceutical plant and logistics sites among the targets.

Later strikes hit energy sites in two regions. Zelenskyy said almost 15,000 people in Volyn lost electricity and parts of Kyiv were partly without power, and that repair crews in some areas could not start work because of the threat of repeat strikes on the same spot.

Europe backs the oil pressure

Ukraine resumed its drone campaign against Russian refineries on Thursday, with Zelenskyy saying Kyiv was no longer bound by the pause. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said she understood why. Speaking before the European Council meeting in Brussels, she said oil pays for most of Russia’s war and that “cutting off the funding for the war is the way to do it.”

Ukraine’s delegation at the OSCE asked partners to tighten sanctions on Russia and hold it to account for attacks on civilians, energy facilities and commercial ships in the Black Sea.