Trump claimed that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an energy truce. Neither side stopped the strikes.

Russia and Ukraine kept trading strikes just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump claimed the two countries had agreed to an energy ceasefire.

Ukrainian forces attacked Rosneft’s Syzran oil refinery in Samara region in the early hours of September 15, sparking a fire at the plant. More than 40 drones were shot down over the region overnight. In Taganrog, the strikes damaged warehouses belonging to Ozon and local agricultural businesses, along with an educational institution, a store, and several residential buildings. The independent Telegram channel Astra reported that the Taganrog-Tsentralny military airfield was also hit. No casualties were reported in either Taganrog or Samara region.

Russian drones struck Kyiv the same morning. The strikes set two gas stations ablaze in the city’s Darnytskyi and Holosiivskyi districts, injuring eight people. A warehouse and several nonresidential buildings elsewhere in Kyiv were also hit. In Zaporizhzhia, a strike on an infrastructure facility killed one man and injured four other people.

“Russia is not stopping its strikes on our energy sector, everyday logistics, and critical infrastructure. And our responses to that are tangible,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote this morning.

Hours earlier, Trump had said on Truth Social that Moscow and Kyiv had agreed to stop striking energy facilities, claiming that Russia’s war against Ukraine — not the U.S. war with Iran — was driving the rise in diesel prices.

The Financial Times called the statement premature. The paper reported that the idea of an energy ceasefire had already been discussed — first at trilateral meetings between the U.S., Russia, and Ukraine, and then, after those talks collapsed in February, through separate contacts and back channels. But sources told the newspaper that Putin does not want such an agreement before winter: Moscow is counting on strikes against Ukraine’s energy system during the cold season to ratchet up pressure on Kyiv and force it into concessions.

Two senior Ukrainian officials told the FT that Trump’s statement was intended to show voters his administration is working to lower fuel prices. It was not the first time Trump had blamed Ukraine for high diesel prices: on the evening of September 13, he directly urged Zelensky to stop striking refineries that produce diesel, saying it is “hurting the world.”

Retail diesel prices in the U.S. have hit a record $6 per gallon (about 3.8 liters) — a problem especially acute for the Trump administration ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.

A source familiar with the U.S. delegation’s recent talks with Putin in Moscow confirmed to Agentstvo that no ceasefire decisions were made during those talks, and that Trump’s announcement was an “improvisation.”

After the morning attacks, the Kremlin stated that it was aware of the ceasefire idea and supported it, but that simply halting strikes on refineries would not solve the problem of high global prices. According to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, doing so would first require ensuring the safe seaborne export of petroleum products and lifting sanctions on Russian energy supplies.

War in photographs: the aftermath of Russian drone strikes on gas stations in Kyiv.