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Russia lost ground in October. Ukraine lost Washington: Ukraine-Russia Geopolitical Briefing | OCT 2026
Updated: Oct 30
Our second monthly assessment of the Ukraine-Russia war is published today.
For the first time since we began tracking this conflict, the month’s most consequential developments did not happen in Ukraine.
On 9th October, President Trump announced that President Putin had agreed to supply more than 4 million tonnes of diesel to global markets, and the US Treasury issued a licence authorising Russian diesel transactions through April 2027. Two days later Trump declared an “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine. Kyiv said it had not agreed to one. Russia struck a Ukrainian power plant within hours of the announcement. On the night of 16th October, Trump signed an executive order waiving key sanctions and tariff provisions of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act — the law he had signed himself four weeks earlier.
Ukraine also reported that American intelligence sharing was interrupted for several days, during which it received no advance warning of Russian ballistic missile launches. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says no pause took place. That disagreement is unresolved, and the fact that it is being conducted in public tells you more than either account does.
Why it happened
The explanation runs through diesel. Ukraine’s campaign against Russian refineries and oil terminals has been its single most effective instrument of the war. Russian diesel exports fell to roughly 141,000 barrels a day in September, against 608,000 in the same month last year, a drop of more than 75%. Around a fifth of Russian refining capacity is idle.
That success is precisely what turned Washington against it. The resulting global shortage pushed up fuel prices ahead of November’s midterm elections, which made Russian supply politically valuable to the White House. The International Energy Agency has warned that diesel will remain constrained well into 2027.
Ukraine held off for a few days, then resumed. On 18th October, it launched the largest attack of the war, striking an oil terminal in St Petersburg; Russia’s Defence Ministry said it shot down more than 1,000 drones.
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Meanwhile, on the ground
The battlefield picture reversed. The Institute for the Study of War assesses that Russian forces lost 122 square kilometres more than they took between 1st September and 16th October, and have gained only about 100 square kilometres in the whole of 2026. Ukrainian counteroffensives near Lyman, Oleksandrivka and Kupiansk have effectively halted the Russian advance. A Russian military blogger claimed Kostiantynivka had fallen; ISW found no evidence of it.
Russia’s answer has been the grid. Attacks on 16th October cut power to more than a million people. The UN verified 328 civilians killed and 2,105 injured in September, 85% more than a year earlier and the deadliest September of the full-scale war. In Kyiv, civilians were killed or injured on 22 of the month’s 30 days, more often than in any month since the invasion began.
Europe moved in the opposite direction to Washington, adopting its largest-ever set of sanctions listings on 12th October: 826 companies and 743 individuals. For businesses, the practical consequence is that the two major sanctions regimes are now diverging rather than tightening together.
What comes next
The period closed with movement. Steve Witkoff met Zelensky in Oslo on 20th October and Putin in St Petersburg on 21st October, after which Moscow agreed in principle to resume three-way talks from around 10th November. We rate that as a realistic possibility rather than a likelihood, a round has been announced as imminent twice since September without convening.
The full assessment runs to fifteen pages and covers the battlefield, both strike campaigns, diplomacy, sanctions, domestic politics in both countries, spillover into Europe and the humanitarian picture,
closing with three scenarios for the next one to three months.
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Our next Ukraine-Russia briefing is published on 23rd November.
