Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced that Ukraine will restart its attacks on Russian oil refineries, expressing dissatisfaction with the “dangerous” cessation of intelligence sharing by American agencies. This announcement comes amid intensified Russian assaults, as reported by the Financial Times.
Zelensky’s comments followed pressure from former President Donald Trump, who urged Ukraine to halt these attacks after the U.S. relaxed sanctions on Russian diesel exports. Trump argued that this decision could help lower fuel prices ahead of next month’s midterm elections.
On Tuesday, Zelensky indicated that Ukraine had refrained from striking Russian refineries since the energy “truce” Trump proposed on Sunday.
Despite Ukraine’s pause, Russia has continued to target Ukrainian energy infrastructure. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated that no specific agreements had been reached, hence operations in this context would persist.
“We are done with that”
In an interview with the Financial Times, Zelensky firmly declared that strikes against Russian oil processing units would resume. “The barrier [against attacking refineries] has been removed. We are done with that,” he stated.
Zelensky noted that he had suspended attacks on energy infrastructure for three days to align with U.S. requests, while Moscow continued its bombardment, resulting in over 100 civilian casualties in the past week alone.
Despite the temporary halt, he pointed out that his forces lacked early warning alerts from the U.S. regarding incoming ballistic missiles.
Starlink Issues Not Technical
Additionally, Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite communication service has faced slowdowns across Ukraine, hindering frontline operations and medium-range attacks on Russian military targets.
Zelensky revealed that Ukrainian military officials were warned by their American counterparts that failure to cease attacks on energy infrastructure would result in restricted access to crucial information. However, this situation was later described in Kyiv as a technical failure.
He dismissed the notion that the Starlink issues were due to a malfunction: “It was not a technical problem; it was a matter of will.”
