Is an Energy Truce Viable in the Ukraine War?

On September 22, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered an energy truce between Ukraine and Russia, one of the clearest openings for limited de-escalation in months. President Trump signaled support for the truce, as these attacks are driving up the global energy prices. The Kremlin, in the meantime, reacted positively to the general idea of an energy ceasefire, while seeking to broaden the discussion to include attacks on Russian seaborne energy exports and sanctions.

The war in Ukraine has increasingly taken on an economic character, with both Russia and Ukraine targeting energy infrastructure. Russia’s geography of coercion through long-range firepower strikes rests on the idea of pressuring the civilians to weaken the leadership. In the meantime, Ukraine has developed its long-range attack capabilities to limit Russia’s economic options by threatening energy exports. While an energy truce ahead of the winter offers incentives to all sides, its prospects remain slim. Previous pauses in attacks have repeatedly broken down. A new energy truce is only possible if the parties can establish precise rules, independent verification, and procedures that prevent one disputed strike from destroying the entire arrangement.

Energy Has Become a Central Front of the War

Energy infrastructure has become one of the principal strategic battlegrounds in the Ukraine war. As each country strives to weaken the other’s ability to sustain war, the conflict has increasingly become a competition between two deep-strike campaigns. While Ukraine seeks to impose costs on Russia by threatening its oil, gas, and refining systems, Russia uses missiles and drones to damage Ukrainian infrastructure and increase economic and civilian pressure. These campaigns have become the most important forces shaping the bargaining environment around the war.

Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign against Russian refineries has intensified substantially over the preceding 18 months. Russian refinery throughput fell to 3.8 million barrels per day in June 2026, its lowest level in more than two decades and roughly 30 percent below the previous year. Reported gasoline production fell by about 20 percent compared with 2025 levels and diesel production by nearly 30 percent, prompting Moscow to restrict fuel exports to protect domestic supplies. Russia, meanwhile, has dramatically expanded its own long-range campaign by launching approximately 55,000 Shahed-type drones in 2025, a fivefold increase compared to previous year. Reported oblast-level damage events increased from 358 in 2023 to 650 in 2024 and 1,553 in 2025. Russia has also repeatedly targeted electricity distribution and transmission infrastructure, including returning to previously damaged substations, which can slow repairs and increase pressure elsewhere in Ukraine’s power system. Russia’s long-range coercion campaign also includes winter campaigns, in which Moscow has deliberately exploited winter conditions to increase pressure on Ukraine’s power grid, heating systems, and repair capacity during periods when civilian and industrial dependence on energy infrastructure is highest.

While these energy attacks are becoming increasingly costly for civilians, they also have global implications. The Strait of Hormuz crisis has already tightened energy markets, and Brent crude climbed above $100 per barrel in September amid disruptions to shipping and attacks on Middle Eastern energy infrastructure. If the current trajectory of attacks against energy infrastructure continues, prices will likely increase as winter approaches. This gives outside powers a reason to support a truce.

A Fragile Truce

Despite the signals favoring a potential energy truce, several factors undermine its prospects. Most importantly, the same attacks that create incentives for a truce also make each side reluctant to accept one. In the case of a truce, Ukraine would be giving Russian refineries time to recover, while Russia would surrender a means of pressuring Ukraine’s population through winter. CSIS Futures Lab analysis of the damages shows that Russia sends 24 percent more Shahed drones and 14 percent more cruise missiles during the winter compared to the rest of the year. An energy truce would change the Kremlin’s coercion strategy significantly.

Furthermore, Russia and Ukraine have already tried versions of this idea before, each time failing to implement a deal. In March 2025, Russia and Ukraine accepted a U.S.-backed moratorium covering oil refineries, pipelines, fuel storage facilities, electricity generation and transmission infrastructure, nuclear facilities, and hydroelectric dams. Yet the arrangement contained serious structural weaknesses: It did not establish the kind of integrated international monitoring architecture necessary for a durable ceasefire, including satellite monitoring, real-time information sharing, investigation of violations, and predetermined consequences. Shorter humanitarian truces have encountered similar problems. During the Orthodox Easter ceasefire in April 2026, both governments accused the other of widespread violations. Ukraine ultimately reported thousands of Russian violations over the course of the ceasefire, while Russia likewise claimed large numbers of Ukrainian violations. This is in line with the conflict resolution literature, as the lack of credible compliance mechanisms creates incentives for rapid escalation whenever attribution is contested.

Design the Truce to Survive Its First Violation

Past ceasefire attempts provide two distinct lessons for the negotiations. The first is the value of specificity. The truce should be well defined in order to prevent a narrowly defined arrangement from becoming the basis for resolving much larger disputes. An energy truce could therefore be structured as a limited agreement. The protected category could begin with the facilities already identified in previous negotiations, supplemented by an agreed registry of locations. Any effort to tie other measures, such as sanction relief, to the agreement should also be excluded in the negotiations. In contrast with failed pauses, the Black Sea Grain Initiative offers a more useful precedent for limited cooperation because it isolated one sector in which the parties and outside actors had overlapping interests. A Joint Coordination Centre in Istanbul brought together representatives of Ukraine, Russia, Turkey and the United Nations. The initiative enabled the export of more than 32 million metric tons of grain and food products to dozens of countries. Yet, it also eventually collapsed as Moscow linked continued participation to complaints about restrictions affecting Russian agricultural and fertilizer exports, including demands involving the Russian Agricultural Bank and access to the SWIFT financial messaging system.

The second lesson is the importance of third-party verification. A neutral monitoring mechanism could investigate alleged violations, while a joint commission could review disputed incidents. Instead of allowing a single incident to terminate the arrangement, responses could escalate gradually depending on the evidence and severity of repeated violations. A joint commission could review disputes, but neither party should be able to suppress technical findings by withholding consensus.

Monitoring such an arrangement would still be difficult, but technology has changed what is possible. Satellite fire detection systems already provide observable evidence of abnormal heat signatures around conflict zones and industrial facilities. NASA’s FIRMS system, for example, records satellite observations of thermal anomalies, and researchers have explored fire detection data as a proxy for conflict activity. Moreover, night-light imagery can potentially identify large outages, while commercial imagery, open-source reporting, air raid data, and local utility information can provide additional evidence. Such mechanisms would reduce reliance on competing statements from Moscow and Kyiv. This could also be a good example of how emerging technologies can support mediators in the conflict monitoring phase.

President Trump’s push for an energy truce could open space for negotiations, but negotiations will likely fail if Russia attempts to tie the truce to sanction relief. A more feasible option would be a limited truce with predefined target sets that could help ensure that Ukrainian civilians have sufficient energy through the winter while stabilizing global fuel prices.

Yasin Bozkus is a doctoral researcher at the American University School of Public Affairs. Yasir Atalan is deputy director and data fellow in the Futures Lab at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.