Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of the Russian president, said Moscow is in contact with the American side and that the Kremlin is "always on the side of peaceful solutions."
He cautioned, however, that halting strikes on energy facilities alone would not solve global problems. "Ensuring the safe operation of refineries and increasing the volume of petroleum product output does not solve the world's problems. Because the main problem is with the export of petroleum products to world markets," Meduza quoted him as saying.
According to Peskov, an energy truce would help saturate Russia's domestic market, although, by his own account, that market is "close to full saturation" and Moscow is capable of stabilizing it without a truce. The Kremlin had previously effectively ruled out such a truce: Peskov himself said the energy sector is Ukraine's "Achilles' heel," and that Moscow favors not a truce but "a settlement that will last forever."
Peskov named two conditions for stabilizing the world market. The first is ensuring "safe commercial navigation" for oil tankers, complaining that Kyiv "is not inclined to guarantee such safety." The second is lifting sanctions on supplies of Russian energy carriers, which he called illegal restrictions.
Trump said on September 14 that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to stop strikes on each other's energy infrastructure. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had earlier said Ukraine is ready for an energy truce provided Russia observes it. Neither Moscow nor Kyiv has officially confirmed that an agreement was reached.
On the night of September 15, the sides again exchanged strikes on energy facilities. Ukrainian drones attacked the Syzran refinery in the Samara region — the regional governor reported damage at one of the industrial enterprises. Russian forces, in turn, struck Kyiv, damaging two gas stations, among other targets.
That same day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov again accused the United States of reneging on agreements allegedly reached in Anchorage. According to him, if Washington had not "backed away" from them, "we would already be living without war for a year." The United States denies that substantive agreements on Ukraine were reached at the Trump-Putin meeting in Anchorage.