MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia accused Ukraine on Friday of attacking its energy facilities despite a moratorium on such strikes, saying a gas infrastructure unit in the town of Sudzha had been destroyed and reserving the right to hit back against such attacks. A Ukrainian official said it was Russia that attacked the gas transit point in Sudzha and the Ukrainian military said Kyiv “strictly adheres” to the moratorium. Reuters could not independently establish which side was responsible. The United States announced separate agreements with Ukraine and Russia on Tuesday to pause their strikes in the Black Sea and against each other’s energy targets – potential stepping stones that Washington hopes will lead to a full ceasefire and peace talks to bring a definitive end to three years of war. Each side has accused the other of breaking the energy truce, underscoring the fragility of the U.S.-brokered agreements. Ukraine’s general staff said Russia had attacked energy facilities in the Kherson and Poltava regions of Ukraine in the past day.
Sudzha, in Russia’s western region of Kursk, is the site of a gas metering station at the transit point where Russia pumped gas by pipeline across Ukraine and into Europe until the end of last year. Flows stopped on January 1 after Ukraine declined to renew the deal because of the war that has been fought since Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022. In a daily conference call with reporters on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ukraine was continuing its strikes on Russian energy facilities. “The Russian side reserves the right, in case the Kyiv regime fails to observe the moratorium, not to observe it either,” Peskov said. Pipeline infrastructure for possible Russian gas exports via Ukraine to Europe remains in place, but the Sudzha facility would need to be rebuilt for gas to be pumped again there at any point in the future. There is another route for the Russian gas, through Sokhranovka in Ukraine’s Luhansk region, part of which has been under the control of Russia-backed separatists since 2014. In May 2022, Ukraine declared “force majeure” for gas flows via Sokhranovka, saying it was “occupied”.
“On March 28, at about 10:20, the Kyiv regime launched a double attack, using, according to preliminary information, HIMARS missiles at the Sudzha gas metering station, which resulted in a major fire, and the energy facility was virtually destroyed,” the Russian defence ministry said. It published a video showing a fierce fire at the site, with flames shooting high into the sky. Reuters was able to verify the location by matching it to satellite imagery. A Ukrainian national security official wrote on Telegram: “Russia has again attacked the ‘Sudzha’ gas transmission system (gas metering station) in Kursk region, which it does not control.” Russia had previously accused Ukraine of attacking the same facility on March 21, which Kyiv also denied. Sudzha was the largest settlement in a piece of Russian territory which Ukraine seized last August in a shock incursion. Since then, Russia has regained most of that area. The extent of any damage to gas pipelines at the location was not immediately clear. Russia has said some of its soldiers crept through a portion of the pipeline earlier this month in s surprise operation to ambush the enemy. The European benchmark front-month contract on the Dutch Title Transfer Facility (TTF) hub edged up by 0.5%to 41.20 euros per megawatt hours (MWh) by 1112 GMT. The Russian defence ministry said Ukraine also attacked power facilities in Belgorod, causing outages there, and tried to hit an oil refinery in the Saratov region. Reuters could not immediately confirm its account. The Rosneft-owned Saratov refinery has been hit previously by Ukrainian drone attacks.
