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Attack on power station immediately puts Trump’s energy truce under pressure

Ukraine reports a Russian attack on CHP-5 heat and power plant in Kharkiv.

There is news on this story (Sunday, 11 October 2026, 22:27): Russian attacks put energy truce under immediate pressure

Follow-up to: Deadly attack puts Trump's diesel deal under pressure Saturday, 10 October 2026, 10:45

A Russian attack reportedly hit the CHP-5 heat and power plant in Kharkiv on Sunday, according to Ukrainian authorities. The report came shortly after Donald Trump said that Russia and Ukraine had immediately stopped attacking each other’s energy infrastructure.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday evening that CHP-5 in Kharkiv had been hit. According to him, there had been further Russian activity in Ukrainian airspace that day and other energy facilities had also been hit. Zelensky said Ukraine remained willing to stop attacks on Russian energy facilities, provided that Russia did the same.

Earlier on Sunday, Donald Trump announced on social media that Russia and Ukraine had agreed an energy truce. He presented it as an immediate wartime agreement. At that point, details about how it had been reached, its precise scope and how compliance would be monitored had not been made public.

The attack on CHP-5 mainly shows how vulnerable the announcement is as long as both governments do not give the same account. The Ukrainian government describes an actual attack after Trump’s announcement. No Russian confirmation or formal text of the truce had been reported in the sources consulted.

A local Ukrainian official told ABC News that the plant had been hit at least twice and that a fire had broken out. The plant supplies both electricity and heat to the region. The extent of the damage and its consequences for electricity and heat supplies are still being investigated.

The issue also has an economic side. Attacks on power plants and networks can increase the costs of production, distribution and repairs, while uncertainty over a truce increases the risks for energy companies and insurers. That does not automatically mean European energy prices will change immediately, but the war remains a source of market risk.

Zelensky said that, according to Ukrainian counts, Russia had carried out more than two hundred attacks in one week on facilities for generating and transmitting electricity. He also spoke of seventeen attacks on gas and oil facilities. Those figures come from his own statement and have not been independently verified by the sources consulted.

For now, therefore, what mainly remains established is the sequence of events: Trump announced an energy truce, after which Ukraine reported a new attack on a power plant. Whether this breached a truce depends on whether there was in fact a joint and operational agreement.

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