Kremlin spokesman Peskov says Russia will not raise the issue of Kyiv's attacks on Russian oil refineries at the upcoming meeting in Abu Dhabi

Kremlin spokesman Peskov says Russia will not raise the issue of Kyiv's attacks on Russian oil refineries at the upcoming meeting in Abu Dhabi.

Throughout the conflict, Russia's posture on Ukrainian strikes against its refining infrastructure has been a live input to crude and products pricing: the attacks themselves tighten export availability of refined products and have periodically lifted diesel cracks and freight rates, while Moscow's rhetorical treatment of them has served as a gauge of escalation risk. Declining to table the issue at a scheduled meeting reads as an effort to keep a negotiating channel intact rather than let it become a casus belli, and in past episodes of this kind such compartmentalisation has tended to cap the geopolitical risk premium rather than remove it, since the physical strikes continue regardless of the diplomatic framing. The actor's prior form matters here: Peskov's public statements are calibrated Kremlin messaging, and what he omits ahead of a meeting has historically been as informative as what he raises. The distinction worth drawing is between the diplomatic track, where this is mildly constructive, and the physical track, where refinery outages and any retaliation against Ukrainian energy infrastructure remain the actual supply variables. Worth watching next are the readouts from the Abu Dhabi meeting itself, any change in the tempo of strikes on Russian refining and export assets, and whether either side's rhetoric shifts around the talks. As a single spokesman's remark, it is a sentiment input rather than a supply event.