Trump says Russia and Ukraine agreed to an energy ceasefire neither has confirmed

President Donald Trump said on Sunday, October 11, 2026, that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to stop striking each other's energy targets, effective immediately. Neither government has confirmed that agreement. President Volodymyr Zelensky said the announcement was news to him, and what he offered was a condition, not a confirmation that a deal was in force.

Trump wrote on Truth Social that there was an energy ceasefire, that "both parties have agreed," and "Do not break it!" The post named no facilities, set no end date and named no one to check compliance. It describes a halt on energy targets, not a general ceasefire.

"The ceasefire announcement was news for me," Zelensky told Axios.

"But if Russians agree to an energy ceasefire, Ukraine will agree," he said. "If President Trump negotiated it with Putin, please tell us when the ceasefire begins. We are ready and we will accept it."

On X on Sunday he set the terms. Ukraine, he wrote, will be ready to stop striking Russian oil refineries if Russia stops striking Ukrainian energy infrastructure. "Any de-escalation steps must be reciprocal and backed by real guarantees." Strikes could stop as early as Sunday, he wrote, "but Putin does not want to do so."

He also wrote that Ukraine supports the ceasefire, that Russia has to support it as well, and that Ukraine is waiting for details from the American side.

Ukrainian officials said Russian attacks were still under way on Sunday and that several energy sites had been damaged.

The Council of the European Union says Russian attacks have destroyed half of Ukraine's energy infrastructure since the full-scale invasion.

What the post leaves unchanged

On Friday, October 9, Trump said he had agreed with President Vladimir Putin to ease sanctions so Russian diesel could reach world markets. He wrote that prices would be coming down "in record numbers, and fast." On Saturday he blamed Zelensky's strikes on Russian refineries for high diesel prices in the United States.

The same day, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control issued General License 135. It authorizes transactions related to the sale, delivery, offloading, and importation of Russian-origin diesel fuel, including into the United States, through 12:01 a.m. Eastern daylight time on Wednesday, April 7, 2027. It does not authorize any debit to an account of Russia's central bank, its National Wealth Fund, or its finance ministry at a U.S. bank.

The license is a permission to buy and ship the fuel. Russia had barred its oil producers from exporting diesel through October 31. On Saturday the Russian government said it was partially lifting that ban, effective that day, to carry out the agreements Putin and Trump reached. The decision allows 500,000 metric tons onto the world market at this stage. Oil companies will start signing export contracts with foreign buyers, in coordination with the government.

On Friday, October 2, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said the government would consider a partial reopening only if output ran ahead of demand at home. On Saturday he said the partial lifting would not affect Russian consumers.

Sunday's post does not raise that allowance, and it does not repair a refinery.

Jesse Thompson and Garrett Golding of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas wrote on Thursday, October 8, that Ukrainian drone attacks reduced Russia's refining capacity by as much as 60% over the summer, though the estimates varied widely from month to month. Earlier attacks, they wrote, had in most cases caused only minor damage, or the loss had been offset because refineries elsewhere ran harder.

They put the wider loss of global refining capacity at as much as 10%. Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries were one cause. So were damaged plants in the Middle East, export curbs in China and Russia, and a March closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the lane out of the Persian Gulf.

That closure for a time blocked refined fuel from leaving the Gulf. Damaged Middle Eastern plants could take months to recover, Thompson and Golding wrote, and the Russian outages could persist. U.S. fuel prices, they wrote, were likely to stay unusually high relative to crude even after shipments through the strait return to normal.

The International Energy Agency said on Thursday, September 17, that diesel markets were likely to stay pressured for months unless refining recovered in Russia or the Middle East, or demand fell quickly. The U.S. average price of diesel at the pump was $6.28 a gallon on Thursday, October 8, AAA reported.

A listed pause already failed

In March 2025 the Kremlin published a 30-day pause and a list of energy sites neither side was to strike. It said either side could treat itself as released after a violation. The White House said Russia and Ukraine had each agreed to develop measures for implementing a ban on energy strikes.

The pause did not hold. Each side accused the other of breaking it. Sunday's post has no such list.

When crude and the oil fund can trade

Crude futures have not traded since the post. West Texas Intermediate futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange reopen at 6 p.m. Eastern. Friday's closing price, the last one before the post, was $91.85 a barrel.

The United States Oil Fund, BUSO, holds near-term West Texas Intermediate futures. It trades with U.S. stocks, which are open Monday, so it cannot reflect the post when futures reopen tonight.