Trump’s Russia Sanctions Shift War Dynamics to the Energy Front

Far from the largely deadlocked front line on the battlefield, Russia and Ukraine are waging a fierce parallel war on each other’s energy assets that could do more to force them to the negotiating table than any flurry of international diplomacy.

This fight came into focus in recent days as the United States and Europe announced sweeping new sanctions on Russia’s oil industry, the lifeblood of the Kremlin’s war machine. Ukraine has been working to rally international action against Russia’s energy economy, while imposing what it calls its own “long-range sanctions”: drone strikes that have damaged dozens of Russian refineries.

Russia’s target is the Ukrainian electricity and gas infrastructure, which it has attacked repeatedly in a devastating campaign as winter approaches. The objective, experts say, is to cripple Ukraine’s ability to function and sap its people’s will to abide the war.

Whether either side will yield under economic pressure is uncertain. But each views its energy attacks, analysts say, as a strategic lever to break the stalemate in a conflict that has ground on for nearly four years and has so far been immune to the Trump administration’s peacemaking efforts.

When those efforts heated up recently, talks to end the war hinged on battlefield realities. With its forces gaining territory, albeit glacially and at great cost, Moscow pressed for a settlement requiring Kyiv to cede all of the land it has lost and some that it still holds. Ukraine called that a nonstarter and insisted on a cease-fire that freezes the current front line, an offer the Kremlin rejected.

Russia is expected to keep pushing on the battlefield. But as winter slows the pace of ground combat, with sparse vegetation reducing cover for troops and brutal cold straining logistics, the energy battle is likely to remain the most active front in the coming months.

Balazs Jarabik, a former European Union diplomat in Kyiv who now works for R.Politik, a political analysis firm, said the new U.S. sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil companies, Lukoil and Rosneft, were most likely a response to the Russian campaign against Ukraine’s power grid.

Experts say Russia could choose to endure the sanctions without altering its war aims. Moscow has repeatedly shown an ability to weather Western sanctions by relying on other trade partners, like China and India, and by exploiting loopholes and hidden channels to evade restrictions.

Still, Mr. Trump’s decision to place the sanctions goes further than previous international measures by targeting the heart of Russia’s wealth, an oil industry that generates hundreds of millions of dollars daily. The move cuts the companies off from much of the global financial system, and comes with a threat to impose penalties on those who keep buying Russian oil.

Analysts estimate that Rosneft and Lukoil account for roughly half of Russia’s crude oil production, and say blacklisting them could prompt critical buyers like India to curtail their imports.

Deprived of these funds, it could become more difficult for Russia to replace lost battlefield equipment and continue paying large sums to army recruits.

“In terms of both equipment and personnel, the key to Russia’s ability to rebuild combat power is money, which is overwhelmingly generated through the oil and gas sector,” Jack Watling, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in Britain, wrote this summer in an analysis outlining the factors that could move Russia to negotiate.

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia acknowledged on Thursday that the sanctions would hurt the economy, but insisted that they would not sway the Kremlin’s calculus in the war. In response, Mr. Trump suggested that Mr. Putin might feel differently in six months, once the sanctions start to bite. “Let’s see how it all works out,” he told reporters.

In addition to the economic measures, Ukraine’s long-range strikes on refineries had by last month destroyed or damaged about 20 percent of Russia’s refining capacity. That has caused severe gasoline shortages in several regions, as Ukraine tries to bring the pain of war to ordinary Russians.

Ukraine has also targeted Russia’s military-industrial complex to curb Moscow’s ability to conduct attacks. On Tuesday, the Ukrainian military said it had used long-range, Western-made Storm Shadow missiles to strike a plant that produced explosives and rocket fuel. The missiles rely on American satellite information, suggesting that the United States authorized their use in Russia.

Kyiv is pushing to get American-made Tomahawk missiles, which could extend its ability to strike deep inside Russia. Mr. Trump has so far not approved the request, and Mr. Putin has issued increasingly vehement warnings against doing so.

But as Ukraine strikes Russia, it must also bear Moscow’s own long-range strike campaign against Ukrainian energy infrastructure. The goal, experts say, is to plunge the population into cold and darkness, undermining morale and disrupting economic activity.

In the past week or so, Ukraine has begun rolling out emergency blackouts across the country to cope with electricity shortages caused by attacks on power plants and substations. Chernihiv, a city of 270,000 people, has faced total blackouts that have put life on hold, halting public transport and disrupting water supplies due to the loss of power at pumping stations.

Russia has targeted Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure since the first year of the war, often timing its attacks to the onset of winter, when power demand peaks. Over time, Ukrainians have adapted, relying on small generators and batteries to get by.

Recent attacks on gas facilities have knocked out roughly 60 percent of Ukraine’s gas production capacity as well as a number of compressor stations needed to pump gas that has already been stored, according to a European official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.

Several cities have delayed turning on centralized heating in residential buildings to cope with gas shortages. Fears are mounting that many households may go without sufficient heat this winter, in a country where subzero temperatures can linger for weeks.

“Today, we face the challenge of going through the most difficult heating season of all the years of the full-scale war,” Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said on Thursday.

Factories face the risk of closing due to power shortages and rising electricity costs. Should energy shortages persist, they could drive more Ukrainians to emigrate, further weakening the economy.

“We are already seeing more refugees from Ukraine in Germany,” Katharina Reiche, Germany’s economy minister, told the news outlet Deutsche Welle on Friday during a visit to Kyiv.

Ukraine is now racing to import as much gas as possible before cold temperatures set in. The European official said Ukraine aimed to bring in roughly four billion cubic meters of gas, at a cost of around $2 billion. Ukraine lacks the money, and it remains unclear whether its European partners, which are struggling with their own budget issues, will finance all the gas imports.

A European plan to use frozen Russian assets to lend Ukraine $163 billion loan, enough to cover its financial needs for the next two years, could alter both Kyiv’s and Moscow’s calculations. But concerns over legal and financial repercussions have so far prevented European countries from adopting the plan.