The Ukrainian president will only stop attacks on Russian refineries if Moscow spares Ukraine’s energy infrastructure – or Washington opens Starlink over Russia or supplies Patriot missiles. According to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine is ready to end its attacks on Russian refineries – but only if one of three conditions is met. Zelensky said this in an interview with journalist Alla Mazur for the Ukrainian television programme TSN.Tyzhden, as reported by the Kyiv Post.
According to this, Ukraine has proposed three paths to an “energy truce” to the American side, none of which has so far been implemented. That is why the Ukrainian armed forces continue to attack Russian oil facilities, Zelensky said on Sunday, 25 October.
Patriot missiles instead of Musk and Putin
The first option: Russia must stop attacking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. “That is fair – an ‘energy truce’,” Zelensky said. The second option is for the US to unlock Starlink over Russia so that Ukraine can learn the locations of Russian launch sites for ballistic missiles and destroy them. The third: if Washington does not unlock Starlink, it should supply Patriot missiles – materiel that depends neither on Elon Musk nor on Vladimir Putin.
“That is the reason why the reaction is what it is – we are fighting for our lives.”
According to Zelensky, Ukraine has not received any of these three forms of support. At the same time, he pointed out that Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries could barely move world market prices: Russia accounts for only 2% of global diesel exports, with the other 98% coming from other exporters.
Red lines ahead of the November talks
According to the Berliner Zeitung, Zelensky also reaffirmed in the interview his conditions for the planned trilateral talks with Russia and the US in November. A limitation of the Ukrainian armed forces and a forced neutral status were not up for discussion; territorial issues could only be addressed at the level of heads of state. Russia must not dictate Ukraine’s security guarantees. Nato membership combined with a strong army was the best safeguard; if accession were not possible, the US and European states would have to give comparable protection commitments modelled on Article 5 of the Nato Treaty. With secured financing, he wanted to maintain an army of 800,000 members, according to the Berliner Zeitung.
According to Reuters, Ukrainian, Russian and American negotiators are to meet in Abu Dhabi in the first half of November. Zelensky had already announced this on Friday, and the Kremlin also confirmed corresponding plans. A meeting between Zelensky, Putin and US President Donald Trump has not yet been agreed. As achievable interim results, Zelensky named, according to a further report by TSN, a halt to attacks on energy supply, security for grain shipments in the Black Sea and a prisoner exchange.
In addition, according to him, Ukraine is planning a broad meeting in Brussels this week – provisionally for Tuesday or Wednesday – to be attended by representatives of Ukraine, the US and the EU at presidential level as well as Nato. The format had been expanded after the American delegation travelled to St Petersburg following a visit to Oslo and Ukraine subsequently received a “briefing”.
Sanctions as collateral, not as an entry fee
Zelensky warned emphatically against lifting sanctions on Russia before an agreement. “Sanctions were imposed in response to aggression, not as a price for the mere possibility of talking,” he said. He had conveyed this position to the American delegation. The international community had adopted more than 20 sanctions packages; whether the same political determination could be mobilised for a new round was questionable. “I don’t want us to be left without any leverage – without sanctions, without money, without frozen assets – when we sit down with Putin,” Zelensky said, referring to a phrase used by Trump: then there really would be very few cards left to play.
The preparations come at a tense stage. According to the Berliner Zeitung, the dispute between Kyiv and Washington is fuelled above all by the Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries, which Trump demands be stopped and which he holds partly responsible for high energy prices. Delays in promised anti-aircraft missiles and restrictions on Starlink had also strained relations. Meanwhile, the fighting continued: in the night to Monday, according to Ukrainian authorities, four people were injured in Zaporizhzhia and two more in the Chernihiv region, as Reuters reports. The Russian defence ministry reported attacks on Ukrainian energy and port facilities. From Russia’s Belgorod region, local authorities reported on Sunday four dead and 14 injured in two Ukrainian drone attacks.
Editor’s note: Whether any of the three conditions named by Zelensky will be met is open. The talks in Brussels and Abu Dhabi have not yet been confirmed for specific dates according to the available information.
