The Russian military has said that it had to shoot down its own drones to fulfill President Vladimir Putin’s order to halt strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. The president gave the order as a result of discussions with his US counterpart Donald Trump on Tuesday.
During their phone call, Putin accepted a proposal by Trump for the sides in the Ukraine conflict to refrain from striking each other’s energy infrastructure for 30 days, the Kremlin said later on Tuesday. The Russian leader “immediately” instructed the country’s military to comply, it added.
The Defense Ministry confirmed in a statement on Wednesday that it had “received an order from the Supreme Commander-in-Chief to halt strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.”
According to the ministry, when Putin’s order came in “seven Russian attack drones were in the air, targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure facilities related to the country’s military-industrial complex in Nikolaev region.”
To fulfill the command, the Russian air defenses had to “neutralize” the UAVs. Six drones were shot down by a Pantsir missile system and another by a fighter jet, it added.
The defense ministry also claimed that “just several” hours after the call between Putin and Trump, “the Kiev regime carried out a deliberate attack with three fixed-wing drones on an energy infrastructure facility in the village of Kavkazskaya in Russia’s Krasnodar Region.”
The strike damaged an on-site oil reservoir and caused a blaze, which is yet to be extinguished, the statement added.
The Kavkazskaya facility is used to transfer crude from rail-transported tanks to a pipeline operated by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), an international firm that lists US energy giants Chevron and Mobil among its partners.
“Clearly, this was a premeditated provocation by the Kiev regime aimed at derailing the US president’s peace initiative,” the statement read.
