Russia hits Ukraine energy plants in a blow to Trump's truce

Olesia Safronova and Daryna Krasnolutska, Bloomberg News on Oct 14, 2026

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Russia said it attacked Ukrainian electricity plants in a “massive strike” overnight, further undermining U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim of an energy truce between the two warring countries.

The Defense Ministry in Moscow said its forces struck six thermal plants and a substation supplying electricity in Kyiv and its surroundings as well as in Ukraine’s northern Kharkiv region. The “ATM Ukrsibbank” data-processing center was also attacked, the ministry said in a Telegram statement.

Russia targeted “the very infrastructure covered by the ceasefire announced by the American President,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday in a post on the X platform. “The strike was entirely deliberate and demonstrative in its scale.”

Zelenskyy said that Ukraine hasn’t attacked Russian oil refineries since Trump announced the truce, while Russia hasn’t committed to any ceasefire.

The strikes raised fresh questions about crucial U.S. intelligence assistance for Ukraine, including on early warning of Russian missile launches, that Kyiv’s European allies can’t easily replace. Ukraine was also caught off guard by a reported slowing of Elon Musk’s Starlink service that plays a vital role in its military operations.

A military adviser to Zelenskyy said SpaceX implemented restrictions on Starlink terminals overnight amid the ballistic strike on Kyiv. Serhii Beskrestnov said the limitation affected the so-called StarShield “military service package.”

“Our defense forces received no warning about this restriction, and it led to the disruption of a number of missions,” Beskrestnov said on Telegram. “All say the Starlink restrictions have affected long-range missions and frontline logistics.”

Ukraine also uses Starlink to help intercept Russian jet-powered drones, Beskrestnov said. “Through their actions, our partners are depriving us of one of the few options available to defend the country” against such attacks, he said.

SpaceX didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside normal business hours. The speed restriction appeared days after Musk said that Zelenskyy “has gone too far,” in a post on his social media platform X.

Ukraine remains critically dependent on intelligence-sharing from Washington as well as for U.S.-made weapons purchases that are financed by other NATO allies. The U.S. temporarily halted intelligence-sharing to Kyiv last year after Zelenskyy and Trump clashed publicly in the Oval Office over their approaches to ending the war.

Zelenskyy told Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney that Ukraine received “no advance warning from our partners” about the Russian ballistic missile launches for the second time this week. He didn’t elaborate on the failure.

On Tuesday, Zelenskyy highlighted a lack of early warning for a “particularly vile” ballistic missile attack on Kyiv. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha later said that intelligence cooperation with the U.S. was continuing and that a delay in air raid alerts was due to “the special type of weaponry that was used by the Russian side.”

Tensions between the U.S. administration and Ukraine have increased since Trump announced last week that he’d reached an agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin to supply diesel to American and global markets to try to ease surging fuel prices ahead of vital midterm elections next month.

Trump also declared that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to an energy truce. On Monday, he acknowledged that neither side had actually committed to halt attacks on each other’s energy infrastructure.

“What is the perimeter of the energy ceasefire, and what does it mean? Was it specified?” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Wednesday, in response to a question on the status of the truce. “Work in this direction is continuing.”

Zelenskyy said Russian forces fired 39 ballistic missiles and more than 120 attack drones targeting Ukraine’s energy and critical infrastructure in the overnight strikes. An apartment building was hit in Kyiv and there are water and power cuts in the capital, Mayor Vitali Klitschko said.

Three municipal combined heat and power plants were attacked in Kyiv, Ukrainian Prime Minister Serhii Koretskyi said on Telegram. At least five people were killed and 25 injured, according to the police.

Separately, Russia’s largest bank, state-run Sberbank, said there was a drone attack on its data center in Balakovo, Saratov region, overnight. All systems and services are operating normally, First Deputy Chairman Alexander Vedyakhin said, according to the Tass news service.