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By Ellie Cook
Senior Defense Reporter
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Russia and Ukraine traded strikes on each other's energy infrastructure into Monday, targeting sites President Donald Trump had decreed last month—without Kyiv and Moscow's agreement—to be off limits.
The attacks took place a day before Ukrainian and Russian negotiators are due to meet for a fresh round of U.S.-mediated talks, designed to craft out a peace deal that has remained elusive despite Trump's pledge to end the fighting within 24 hours when he was reelected in 2024.
A drone struck the Kirishi oil refinery southeast of the city of Saint Petersburg, sparking a fire at the facility, according to the Leningrad regional governor, Aleksander Drozdenko. The refinery is Russia's second-largest and Ukraine has said it supplies Russia's armed forces.
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The Kirishi facility would likely be able to pump out up to 400,000 barrels of oil each day, U.S. energy officials said last year. Kyiv estimates the refinery has a capacity of around 20 million tons of crude oil per year, accounting for more than 6 percent of all Russia's refinery operations.
Ukraine's military also said on Monday it had hit a fuel plant linked to Russia's Iskander ballistic missiles close to Saint Petersburg.
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Russia, meanwhile, said it had hit electrical substations in Ukraine's Dnipropetrovsk, Cherkasy and Vinnytsia regions, as well as around the country's capital city in the early hours of Monday.
Households in around half of Ukraine's regions were cut off from electricity on Monday morning, Ukraine's Energy Ministry said. The Kyiv area and the central Dnipropetrovsk region were the worst hit, authorities said.
"Right now, many of our cities and communities are facing a very difficult situation with power, water, and heating supplies due to Russian strikes," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Monday.
Ukrainian First Deputy Energy Minister Artem Nekrasov said on Monday Russia had attacked Ukraine's oil, gas and broader energy sites 128 times between November 2 and November 8.
Trump declared on October 11 both countries would abide by a so-called "energy ceasefire," forgoing assaults on the other's critical infrastructure. Neither Moscow nor Kyiv confirmed they had agreed to the pause, and Zelensky said at the time it was "news to me."
While no Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries were recorded for several days after Trump's comments—though Moscow has disputed this—Ukraine said Russia had continued to attack Ukrainian sites. Kyiv resumed bombarding refineries on October 15.
Trump had pressured Kyiv to stop hitting refineries because of soaring gas and diesel prices for U.S. consumers ahead of the midterm elections last week. Fuel prices have soared since the U.S. and Israel started attacks on Iran in February.
European countries and Ukrainian officials recoiled last month as Trump unveiled a diesel deal with the Kremlin, meaning several waves of Russian diesel would be released to the global market and U.S. sanctions would be relaxed. Zelensky said the agreement would provide a financial boon for Russia's limping economy.
Ukrainian and Russian negotiators will meet on Tuesday in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, for talks brokered by the U.S. on a potential peace deal.
The last round of peace discussions took place in February, shortly before the U.S. launched its war against Iran.
Trump said in an interview with CBS, aired Sunday, he believed the two countries were "close to making a deal," although there was "tremendous hatred" between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky.
Trump, appearing to reference the issue of territory and signaling that Kyiv may have to concede land to Moscow, said Ukraine would look a "little bit different" after a peace deal comes into force.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in a similar message to reporters on Monday Ukraine is "geographically" a "different country."
Neither Kyiv nor Moscow have signaled a willingness to compromise on their territorial demands, which have been the thorniest issue in the ultimately unfruitful peace negotiations.
Russia claims to have annexed the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions of eastern Ukraine, although it doesn't fully control any of these territories.
Russia had seized Crimea, to the south of the mainland, from Ukraine in 2014. Moscow describes these areas as part of Russia but its grip on the annexed regions is not internationally recognized.
Ukraine has outright rejected giving up land it still controls to Russia, especially in the Donetsk region where Kyiv maintains many of its most important defenses.
Ukraine has long said its constitution bans ceding land to Russia, a move that would also be deeply unpopular with a Ukrainian public scarred by years of brutal warfare.
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