President Donald Trump’s anxiety over soaring fuel prices and the midterm elections, now less than a month away, continues. The White House spent the weekend pressing Kiev to stop striking Russian oil refineries, believing that will alleviate the problem. Then, on the morning of Oct. 11, Trump announced on Truth Social: “Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE in the War between Russia and Ukraine. Both parties have agreed. Do not break it!”

According to Axios, however, Ukraine’s acting president Volodymyr Zelensky said the announcement “was news for me.” Russia made no official comment, but, later on Sunday, struck a large power plant in Kharkov.

According to a follow-up Axios report, a White House official clarified that the proposal was only “refinery for refinery,” and if each side stops hitting the other’s oil refineries, then power plants and grids will possibly follow. A Ukrainian official pointed out that Ukraine has only one refinery (the Kremenchuk oil refinery, which mainly processed Azerbaijani crude shipped across the Black Sea), which has already been damaged. He called the proposal lopsided.

As a potential sign of the desperation the White House is feeling, the Financial Times reported that, during their meeting in Miami on Oct. 9, special envoys Witkoff and Kushner threatened the Ukrainian delegation with cutting off U.S. intelligence sharing unless Ukraine halted the strikes, for which it relies on U.S. data for targeting. A Ukrainian official gave Axios the same account, although a U.S. official denied it. Kiev refused to back down, with a senior Ukrainian official telling the FT: “We will burn Russian) refineries.”