Ukraine, Russia in talks on halting strikes on energy facilities, FT reports

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(Reuters) – Ukraine and Russia are in the early stages of negotiations about potentially halting airstrikes on each other’s energy facilities, the Financial Times reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.

The FT, citing sources late on Tuesday who it said included senior Ukrainian officials, reported that Ukraine was seeking to resume talks that had come close to an agreement in August and were mediated by Qatar.

The talks, the sources told the FT, had been derailed by Kyiv’s forces launching an incursion that month into Russia’s Kursk region that borders Ukraine.

“There are very early talks about potentially restarting something,” the FT cited a diplomat who the newspaper said was briefed on the negotiations as saying. “There’s now talks on the energy facilities.”

Asked about the report, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was a lot of fake news, even in the most reputable media, that “has nothing to do with reality”.

The Russian Defence Ministry, the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and the Ukrainian Defence Ministry did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.

A big chunk of Ukraine’s power capacity has been destroyed or seized due to Russian attacks on energy infrastructure since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbour in 2022, forcing Kyiv to rely on its nuclear power facilities and imports of energy from Europe.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said last month that Russia had knocked out the gigawatt equivalent of over half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. The European Union aims to restore 2.5 GW of capacity, about 15% of the country’s needs, she said, referring to proposed EU-funded repairs.

Ukraine had no powerful long-range weapons at the start of the war, but has since developed long-range attack drones and used them to hit targets deep inside Russia, ranging from oil refineries to power plants and military airfields.

Zelenskiy told the FT earlier in October that a deal to protect energy facilities could signal a Russian willingness to engage in broader peace talks. Moscow says it wants peace, but has set conditions that Kyiv regards as unacceptable.