Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Monday that Russian forces attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure even after President Donald Trump announced what he called an immediate energy ceasefire between Moscow and Kyiv, accusing Vladimir Putin of rebuffing Washington’s peace push.
“We are ready today for energy ceasefire, as President Trump said. But I’m not sure that Putin is ready because even after yesterday’s messages from the president about energy ceasefire, Putin attacked our gas infrastructure,” Zelenskyy told Bill Hemmer on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom.”
Zelenskyy said Ukraine had already held off striking Russian energy facilities overnight. “We didn’t attack any energy objects on the territory of Russia because President Trump said that there will be an energy ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia. And we didn’t attack, but Russia attacked our gas stations, energy infrastructure, infrastructure and other things,” he said, calling the strikes Putin’s “answer” to Trump.
Trump announced Sunday on Truth Social that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to halt attacks on energy facilities immediately. Moscow has not confirmed accepting any such agreement, and the scope of the proposal remains disputed. A White House official told Axios the plan initially centered on oil refineries, with a broader halt covering power plants and electricity grids to possibly follow — and acknowledged Russia had not yet agreed to anything.
Pressed on whether Ukraine would stop striking Russia’s oil refineries specifically, Zelenskyy said a ceasefire covering refineries alone would ignore Ukraine’s real vulnerability. “When we speak about energy ceasefire, it means only one thing: that they don’t attack our energy infrastructure, and we don’t respond to their energy infrastructure. This is called energy ceasefire,” he said, adding a conditional pledge: “If Russia will not attack our energy, we will not attack the energy.”
Trump has repeatedly blamed Ukrainian refinery strikes for pushing up fuel prices and announced Friday that Russia had agreed to release diesel supplies to U.S. and global markets, a move that drew criticism from lawmakers wary of handing Moscow extra revenue. Zelenskyy rejected the premise entirely. “Everybody understands that the price on diesel doesn’t depend on our attacks on diesel in Russia,” he said. “Everybody understands that it depends on the blocking of Hormuz Strait.”
Strikes on the ground
Ukraine’s charge d’affaires in Washington, Denys Sienik, said Sunday that Russian forces hit a power plant in Kyiv, cutting electricity and water, then struck a thermal power plant in Kharkiv after Trump’s announcement. “In total, over the course of the week, Russia struck electricity generation and transmission facilities more than 200 times,” Sienik wrote on X.
East2West News reported Monday that three civilians — a 16-year-old boy and two women, ages 19 and 51 — were killed in a strike near a grocery store in the Kharkiv region, and that five people were wounded when a residential high-rise was hit. In Pisochyn, a woman told the agency she had watched a power plant come under bombardment shortly after Trump’s announcement. “We believed the statement that they wouldn’t strike energy infrastructure,” she said. “Just ten minutes after that promise was made, there were already five strikes.”
The agency also reported a Ukrainian strike on a Russian military base in occupied Khrustalnyi in the Luhansk region, with three large fires reportedly visible; the damage and casualties there could not be independently confirmed. Reuters separately reported Monday that Russia kept striking Ukrainian energy targets after the ceasefire announcement, while Kyiv maintained it had held off hitting Russian refineries.
Elections and 60 days
The interview also surfaced friction over Trump’s recent suggestion that Ukraine needed new leadership and had missed chances to settle with Russia. “If President Trump wants to change the leader in Ukraine, he has to know that only our people can change,” Zelenskyy said.
He said he was open to holding an election but that voting was impossible without a real pause in the fighting. “I’m ready for elections. Really, we need a minimum 60 days for security of infrastructure to prepare for elections,” he said. “We are speaking about thousands of drones, ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, how can people vote? It’s not even about the law. The law is very important. But we speak first of all about security.”
Zelenskyy said he last spoke directly with Trump in New York during the U.N. General Assembly in late September.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed the idea of a 60-day pause for elections, arguing European countries would use it to resupply Ukraine’s military. “I don’t think he deserves a respite,” Lavrov said Monday, according to the BBC.
Diesel deal draws fire
Trump’s decision to ease restrictions on Russian diesel has drawn scrutiny from critics who say it could hand Moscow additional revenue while its forces keep fighting. Carrie Filipetti, executive director of the Vandenberg Coalition and a former deputy assistant secretary of state in Trump’s first administration, said both sides appeared caught off guard by the ceasefire announcement.
“Both Russia and Ukraine seemed surprised by the announcement of an energy ceasefire, and unsurprisingly, Russia has continued to attack Ukrainian energy facilities — reportedly as recently as a few hours ago,” Filipetti told Fox News Digital. “Putin probably hopes the new diesel deal — which directly undermines recent US legislation calling for an increase in tariffs and sanctions against Russian energy — will discourage President Trump from holding Putin accountable for these continued violations and attacks.”
“If we want a real ceasefire, paying directly for Putin’s war machine through this new diesel deal is not the way to do it,” she added. “President Trump’s goal of a ceasefire could be a real win — but it’s only going to happen if we stop the diesel deal.”
Morgan Murphy, former head of public diplomacy for the Special Presidential Envoy to Russia and Ukraine, offered a more favorable view of Trump’s approach. “President Trump has consistently prodded both sides toward the only realistic outcome — negotiation,” Murphy told Fox News Digital. “Both sides are losing right now: Ukraine doesn’t have the combat power to retake seized land, and Russia is destroying its future demographics with every passing day.” He added: “Trump is right to push for a ceasefire. An endless war of attrition benefits only the makers of weapons and coffins.”
Zelenskyy, for his part, pointed to the human toll driving his urgency, saying Russian strikes were killing between 20 and 30 civilians a day — a figure Fox News said it had not independently verified. “We want to end this war as quickly as possible,” he said. “Ceasefire is a good first step from both sides. This is very important.”
Fox News Digital said it had reached out to the White House for comment but had not received a response by publication time.
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