President Donald Trump declared on Sunday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an immediate "energy ceasefire," a surprise announcement that would halt strikes on each other's energy infrastructure — but that Ukraine's president said came as news to him, and that Russia has not publicly confirmed.
Trump made the announcement in a post on his Truth Social platform. "Effective immediately, there is an energy ceasefire in the War between Russia and Ukraine," he wrote. "Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!" The White House repeated the message on the social platform X about 20 minutes later.
Neither the president's post nor the White House follow-up offered any details. Trump did not say when the agreement was reached, how long it would last, which facilities it would cover, or how it would be monitored or enforced.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the news outlet Axios that he had not been told about any deal before Trump's post. "The ceasefire announcement was news for me," he said. "But if Russians agree to an energy ceasefire, Ukraine will agree. If President Trump negotiated it with Putin — please tell us when the ceasefire begins — we are ready and we will accept it."
Later in the day, Zelenskyy struck a more formal tone in a post on X, saying Ukraine supports the ceasefire and was awaiting details from the American side. He said he had spoken about the development with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Finnish President Alexander Stubb and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, and stressed that Russia must also back the arrangement. By midday on Sunday, the Kremlin had not publicly confirmed any agreement, and a senior Ukrainian official told the Kyiv Independent that Kyiv had no information about a deal and doubted Russia had been informed.
The announcement capped several days of open tension between Washington and Kyiv over Ukraine's campaign of strikes on Russian oil refineries. On Saturday, Trump sharply criticized those attacks, saying it was time for Ukraine to get a new president and blaming Zelenskyy for high fuel prices in the United States. Trump has argued that Ukraine's refinery strikes have contributed to rising diesel prices that are hurting his Republican Party ahead of the November midterm elections. Days earlier, Washington had temporarily lifted sanctions on Russian fuel, and Trump announced he was working with Russian President Vladimir Putin to release more diesel into global markets.
Zelenskyy pushed back on the blame. He argued it was easy to fault Kyiv "when everybody in the world understands" that fuel prices are rising because of the war in the Middle East. He also offered a reciprocal arrangement: in an interview aired earlier Sunday on ABC's This Week, he said Ukraine would be ready to stop striking Russian oil refineries if Moscow stopped striking Ukraine's energy infrastructure. "We are asking President Trump to give them a signal, not to attack energy infrastructure of Ukraine," he said.
The Ukrainian leader went further, offering to organize presidential elections if Putin agreed to a 60-day halt in the fighting. "Please tell Putin, give us two months, 60 days of total ceasefire, 60 days, and we will organise elections," he told ABC News. Holding a vote during the war would be unlawful under Ukraine's martial law, in force since Russia's full-scale invasion began in February 2022, and officials say a nationwide election is logistically near-impossible with a fifth of the country occupied, millions of Ukrainians displaced and soldiers on the front line. Zelenskyy's term formally expired in May 2024, though the constitution allows him to remain in office until a successor is sworn in.
Skepticism about the announcement is not hard to find. On September 14, Trump claimed on social media that both countries had agreed "not to hit" each other's energy infrastructure, offering no details on that proposal either. Zelenskyy had said Ukraine was ready to comply if Russia did — and nothing came of it. The coming weeks will show whether Sunday's declaration follows the same path or becomes the first genuine step toward shielding the energy systems both sides have hammered as winter approaches. Trump has kept several foreign crises in motion at once, from ruling out new American strikes on Iran ahead of the midterms to the pressure campaign around Tehran — and the energy truce, real or not, now joins that crowded list.