Above photo: A thermal power plant is damaged in a Russian airstrike in Ukraine on April 2. Oksana Parafeniuk.
Ukraine and Russia were set to hold talks in Qatar on an agreement to stop targeting energy infrastructure.
But they have been postponed.
Ukraine’s offensive into Russia’s Kursk Oblast has derailed planned indirect negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian officials that could have resulted in a partial ceasefire, The Washington Post reported on Saturday.
The two sides were scheduled to send officials to Qatar for negotiations on an agreement that would halt strikes on energy and power infrastructure on both sides. Qatari officials would have acted as mediators instead of having the Russian and Ukrainian negotiators meet directly.
An unnamed diplomat told the Post that Russia postponed the talks after Ukraine launched its invasion of Kursk on August 6. The diplomat said the talks weren’t called off altogether, saying the Russians “didn’t call off the talks, they said give us time.” However, publicly, Russian officials are now ruling out the idea of talks with Ukraine, citing attacks on civilians in Kursk.
“After August 6, the world could see the Ukrainian Banderites’ response to this good will gesture – the bandit attack on the Kursk Region, their atrocities against the civilian population,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Sunday. “Naturally, as [Russian President] Vladimir Putin has said, there is nothing to talk about with people who are doing this.”
A deal halting attacks on energy infrastructure would have given Ukrainians significant relief for the winter. Since October 2022, after the first Ukrainian bombing of the Crimean Bridge, Russian missiles and drones have pounded Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Over the past year, Ukraine started successfully targeting Russian oil refineries and other energy infrastructure with drone attacks.
Russia and Ukraine have not engaged in any talks on a potential ceasefire since the early days of the invasion. A peace deal was on the table during negotiations in March and April 2022, but diplomacy was discouraged by the US and its allies, which promised to fund the Ukrainian war effort.
Despite Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk derailing a limited ceasefire and risking a major escalation from Russia, the US is supporting the invasion by allowing Ukraine to use US-provided weapons.