Russia wants to "freeze" Ukraine, Ukraine: "We will warm ourselves in the fire of oil refineries"

When Russia announced its intention to “freeze” Ukraine, Ukraine responded by saying, “We will warm ourselves in the fire of oil refineries.”

On August 14, the Russian Defense Ministry posted on its Telegram channel a picture of drones and the caption, “Freezing awaits you in winter.” The message followed reports of strikes on “port infrastructure and naval vessels used in the interests of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.”

A few hours later, the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ Strategic Communications Center responded to the Russian military department on its channel with the following statement: “We will warm ourselves in the fire of Russian oil refineries.”

On the same day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed that a cessation of hostilities on the current front line was unacceptable: “It’s not about how comfortably someone lives today, our people are suffering, they are dying from these terrorist acts. It is about our responsibility to the thousand-year history of the Russian state.” Lavrov added that Russia is stepping up its actions against Ukraine, adding, “We are already doing this. They are starting to groan.”

A day earlier, on August 13, Reuters reported, citing a source, that Ukraine had sent Russia, through a third party, a proposal for a mutual cessation of attacks on civilian objects in the Black Sea. This was because the hostilities in the region were endangering global food supply chains.

A few days earlier, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidon said that Ankara had sent proposals to Kiev and Moscow to create a mechanism for imposing a moratorium on attacks on commercial ships in the Black Sea. However, on August 14, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated that “the Russian side has not received a formal Turkish appeal through official channels specifying the terms of this initiative.”

In June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky published an open letter to Vladimir Putin, in which he proposed a direct meeting of the leaders and a ceasefire along the entire front line during the negotiations.

Since 2022, every fall, the Russian Armed Forces have intensified attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure in order to deprive the country of electricity and heat during the winter. In particular, in the fall of 2024, Russia managed to damage almost all major thermal power plants, knocking out about 80 percent of Ukraine's total electricity generation capacity. On the eve of the upcoming winter, the Russian Armed Forces are mainly focusing on destroying the power grid infrastructure (substations and power lines) in the Sumy, Chernihiv, and Kharkiv regions.