Russia, Ukraine trade energy truce breach accusations

Russia and Ukraine on Wednesday traded accusations of launching new attacks against each other's energy facilities, in violation of a US-brokered moratorium.

Both sides said they were providing details of the alleged violations to the United States, which persuaded Moscow and Kyiv to agree to the limited truce last month as a hoped-for stepping stone towards a full ceasefire.

According to Russia's defence ministry, Ukraine had conducted drone and shelling attacks in the western Kursk region that cut off power to over 1,500 households.

In the Russian-held part of Ukraine's Luhansk region, the state gas company said that a Ukraine drone strike on a gas distribution station had left more than 11,000 customers around the town of Svatove with limited access to gas.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said a Russian drone hit an energy substation in the Sumy region and artillery fire damaged a power line in Dnipropetrovsk, cutting off electricity to nearly 4,000 consumers.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the fact that President Vladimir Putin had agreed the energy truce was evidence he was serious about engaging in a peace process, something that Kyiv and some of its European allies dispute.

According to him, Moscow would keep working with the Americans despite what he called daily Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.

On Tuesday, Zelensky said that Russia was breaking the energy truce, calling on the US to strengthen sanctions against Moscow, as Trump has threatened to do.

Ukraine said last month it was willing to accept a full 30-day ceasefire but Putin declined to agree to that, raising a series of questions about how it would be monitored and concerns that Ukraine would use the breathing space to mobilise more soldiers and acquire more weapons from the West.