On Monday Ukraine bombed an oil pumping station around 7km from the Kropotkinskaya facility in Russia. This attack is the latest in a string of bombings Ukraine has carried out against Russian energy infrastructure since it had agreed to not target energy infrastructure as part of President Donald Trump’s ceasefire agreement.
“The latest attack reportedly took place at 2 a.m. on Monday on the Kropotkinskaya oil pumping station in Russia’s Krasnodar Region. The station is operated by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), which works with U.S. energy giants such as Mobil and Chevron. Russian air defense systems intercepted a Ukrainian attack UAV some 7km from the facility, with fragments falling in the area of a railway station, according to the Defense Ministry,” RT said Monday.
Interestingly, Ukraine appears to lash out any time a diplomatic move toward peace takes place. On Monday, diplomats from Washington and Moscow are meeting in Saudi Arabia to hold peace negotiations.
”Every time it’s the same story. Before any contacts, including during visits to Moscow by foreign delegations, the Kiev regime commits terrorist acts, attacks on civilian infrastructure, on civilian objects, extremist acts, and so on… They don’t need peace. They have stated this repeatedly,” Zakharova told reporters.
Monday’s discussions are being lauded by Trump’s national security adviser Mike Walz.
“We’re moving closer and we’re closer to peace than we ever have been,” Walz told CBS’ Face the Nation. “And now we have technical teams, actually, with Ukrainians and Russians at the same facility, conducting proximity talks.”
The discussions aim to make industrial activity in the war-torn region more permissible.
“We now going to talk about a Black Sea maritime ceasefire so that both sides can move grain fuel and start conducting trade again in the Black Sea,” Walz said, going on to discuss the other main topic of Monday’s meeting. “We’ll talk the line of control… details of verification mechanisms, peace keeping, you know, freezing the lines where they are.”
Russia has said that Monday’s talks are ‘creative‘, likely meaning the discussions are ‘creating’ new opportunities from peace and paradigms of peace.
Russia has said they have been abiding by the Trump ceasefire.
“There have been no new commands from [Russian President Vladimir Putin]. Our armed forces are following all instructions from the commander-in-chief,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.