The past week of the Ukraine war has showcased just how much the energy conflict between Kyiv and Moscow has changed. In prior years, Russia focused on hitting Ukrainian power plants, whereas Kyiv focused on keeping them up as its Western backers hit Moscow with sanctions and global energy firms pulled out en masse. Little of that remains true today.
Now that Russian gas is no longer flowing across Ukraine into Europe, Moscow has pivoted to attacking gas infrastructure — most recently a series of attacks on Tuesday night — driving a gas deficit of several billion cubic meters that could result in winter heating cuts and production problems at military industrial facilities. Kyiv, for its part, has stepped up long-range drone attacks on Russian oil refineries, which have succeeded in pushing Russia’s gasoline prices to record highs. Still, there’s enough spare production capacity that “the sort of full-scale fuel crisis that could end up impairing the functioning of the economy — or the army — is still a long way off,” Sergey Vakulenko at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center wrote. And Ukraine’s strikes on the Druzhba oil pipeline risk rupturing its relations both with the EU and the US.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, seems to be dangling the prospect of Russia’s re-integration with the Western energy market: A range of energy deals were reportedly discussed during recent talks in Moscow.