A hotly anticipated phone call between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 18 failed to produce any major breakthroughs, but it did yield a tentative agreement on a partial cease-fire covering attacks on energy infrastructure. The White House hailed the news as a significant step toward a future peace deal. But critics noted that any pause in attacks on the energy sector could actually benefit Putin by limiting Ukraine’s ability to thwart Russian military efforts.
Putin has so far refused to join Ukraine in accepting the U.S. offer of a full ceasefire. Instead, in a phone call on Tuesday, he agreed to halt attacks on energy infrastructure for a 30-day period. It appears to be a calculated concession. It gives Trump something tangible to show for his peacekeeping efforts, but it also allows Putin to further delay the negotiating process while continuing his efforts to weaken Ukraine militarily and diplomatically.
Crucially, Russia has much more to gain than Ukraine from a temporary ceasefire in the energy sector. While both countries have attempted to target energy infrastructure, the timing of the proposed pause in attacks appears to favor the Kremlin.
Since the first winter of the war, Russia has launched a series of air offensives targeting Ukraine’s civilian energy infrastructure in an attempt to break the country’s will to resist, leaving millions of Ukrainians without access to electricity and heating. These attacks have destroyed about half of Ukraine’s pre-war power generation capacity and led to periods of rolling blackouts across the country.
Faced with unprecedented challenges posed by ongoing Russian bombing, Ukraine has managed to adapt. The country has significantly strengthened its air defenses since 2022, while the Ukrainian power grid has proven surprisingly resilient. Kyiv has also received extensive financial and technical support from international partners, which has proven crucial in the fight to keep the electricity flowing.
Seasonal changes are an additional factor in Russia’s bombing strategy. Despite numerous large-scale missile and drone attacks in recent months, Ukraine has avoided the feared energy collapse of the winter season. The arrival of spring is expected to further undermine the effectiveness of Moscow’s energy offensive, as higher temperatures in Ukraine reduce demand for electricity and longer days minimize the psychological impact of power outages.
As the Kremlin tries to destroy Ukraine's energy grid, Ukraine's own campaign of airstrikes against Russia's oil and gas industry is steadily accelerating. Ukrainian officials say the attacks are aimed at weakening Russia's wartime economy and creating logistical problems for Putin's army in Ukraine.
The first attacks on Russian refineries occurred in the early months of the war. But Ukraine initially lacked the long-range firepower to mount a sustained air offensive, and its capabilities were further undermined when the country’s international partners imposed restrictions on the use of Western weapons inside Russia.
Ukrainian authorities have responded to these restrictions by prioritizing the development and domestic production of long-range drones and missiles. As Ukraine’s air arsenal has expanded, so have attacks on Russia’s vast energy sector. Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries first made headlines in the spring of 2024. The first three months of this year have seen a further escalation in attacks, reflecting Ukraine’s increased long-range drone capabilities and growing drone production.
Assessing the scale of the damage caused by these Ukrainian strikes is difficult. Amid tightened wartime censorship, Russia no longer publishes refining data or other key industry figures. Meanwhile, Kremlin officials remain tight-lipped, typically claiming that any fires caught on video are the result of debris from intercepted drones. But according to Reuters data published in early February, Ukrainian drone attacks have knocked out about ten percent of Russia’s total refining capacity since the start of 2025.
The recent surge in attacks may be just the beginning. Ukraine has ambitious plans to dramatically increase drone production and is developing a range of long-range weapons, including missile-drone hybrids capable of striking targets deep inside Russia.
On March 15, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the latest breakthrough in the country’s missile program by successfully deploying a domestically-made cruise missile. Dubbed the Long Neptune, the Ukrainian cruise missile is an adaptation of an earlier Neptune model that was designed for use against warships and was famous for sinking Russia’s Black Sea Fleet flagship Moskva in April 2022. With a claimed range of about 1,000 kilometers, the Long Neptune could wreak havoc across Russia’s energy sector.
This is bad news for Putin, who relies heavily on Russia’s oil and gas sector to fund and supply his war machine. With Russia’s air defenses already stretched thin to cover the front lines of the invasion in Ukraine, Putin is now unable to adequately protect his energy industry from air attack. It is therefore not surprising that he has now agreed to a mutual pause in attacks that will keep his refineries, pipelines, and export hubs safe for at least a month. Any progress toward peace is certainly welcome, but Putin’s support for Trump’s partial ceasefire should be seen as a pragmatic move, not a sign of his willingness to end the invasion of Ukraine.
David Kirichenko is a research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society.
Source: Source
