UKRAINE has resumed its attacks on Russian refineries with a strike at an installation in the Ryazan region, the regional governor said on Thursday, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy voiced his anger at a “dangerous” withdrawal of US intelligence.
Since US President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement of an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine on Sunday, Kyiv had refrained from attacking Russian refineries, which the US leader had blamed for raising diesel prices on global markets.
But Zelenskiy had voiced increasing frustration with Russia’s continued attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, which he said on Wednesday had left 600,000 people without power. He warned that Ukraine would not suspend its own attacks indefinitely if Russia did not reciprocate and also criticised what he said was Trump’s favouritism toward Russia.
In an interview with the Financial Times published on Thursday, he said Ukraine’s patience had run out.
“The block (on attacking refineries) is out. We’re done,” he told the newspaper.
Pavel Malkov, the governor of Ryazan, said in a post on Telegram that a major Ukrainian drone attack on the region had sparked a fire at an oil refinery.
“The material damage is now being assessed. Emergency services are working at the scene,” he said.
In his interview, Zelenskiy criticised Washington’s eagerness to strike business deals with Moscow and Trump’s apparent admiration for Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Trump on Saturday called for Ukraine to replace Zelenskiy and railed against Ukraine’s attacks on Russian oil infrastructure, one day after announcing a diesel supply deal with Russia, aiming to lower fuel prices that have soared since the US-Israeli war with Iran began in February.
Despite Ukraine’s suspension of refinery attacks, Ukrainian officials complained that they had not received any US early-warning alerts in recent days for incoming Russian ballistic missiles.
They also said the military version of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite communications service had been slowed across the country, hampering frontline operations and medium-range strikes against Russian military sites.
Musk said on Wednesday in a post on X that Starshield – the military version of Starlink – was owned and controlled by the US government, which decided on any limits on speed.
Zelenskiy has said that Ukrainian military officials were warned by their US counterparts that Washington would block intelligence unless they halted strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.
In the FT interview Zelenskiy said the suspension was presented to Kyiv as a technical glitch, but he dismissed the idea that failures of the Starlink satellite system might have been caused by a fault.
“It was not a technical problem, it was the will,” he told the FT.
Asked whether Ukraine would be open to halting energy strikes as a way of repairing relations with the White House, he told the newspaper he could only agree if in return he was given more US-made Patriot interceptors, calling it the “minimum” that would be acceptable. (Reuters)
