Ukraine to restart strikes on Russian oil refineries, Zelensky says
The Ukrainian president says a three-day pause is over after fresh Russian attacks and US attempts to pressure Kyiv.
Ukraine to resume attacks on Russian oil refineries, Zelensky says
Ukraine will restart strikes on Russian oil refineries, Volodymyr Zelensky has said, while accusing the US of pulling back vital support.
The Ukrainian president said he had paused such attacks for three days at Washington’s request, even as Russia kept hitting Ukrainian energy infrastructure. “We’re done,” he told the Financial Times.
Zelensky also accused the US of withholding intelligence-sharing on Russian strikes and slowing Starlink satellite services used by Ukraine’s military in an effort to pressure Kyiv into ending the attacks entirely after it struck a deal to import Russian diesel.
He had earlier said he would accept the so-called “energy ceasefire” announced by US President Donald Trump on Sunday if Moscow also observed it.
But Zelensky said Russia ignored the proposed deal within hours of it being announced, with strikes leaving hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without power. The Kremlin never said it had agreed to the deal.
Asked by Piers Morgan on Wednesday night, Zelensky said he felt betrayed by the US after Washington appeared to withdraw key parts of its support.
The Ukrainian leader told the FT that Ukrainian officials had been told by US counterparts that “if you will not stop [the strikes], we will block intelligence”.
Ukraine’s military depends on US early-warning alerts about incoming Russian aerial attacks to help mount air defences and limit successful strikes, while Starlink internet uplinks are used across its war effort.
There were suggestions that the slowdown in Starlink services was caused by a technical fault — something owner Elon Musk appeared to deny, implying instead that it was the Trump administration.
“It was not a technical problem, it was the will,” Zelensky told the FT while in London.
He said he would now only stop strikes on Russian oil infrastructure — which Kyiv says are crucial to cutting off revenue streams to Russia’s war machine — if the US provided more Patriot air defence missiles.
Adopting a more defiant tone than recently, the Ukrainian president told the newspaper that his American counterpart had an affinity for autocratic leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
He said it was not up to him to repair US-Ukrainian relations given the events of the past week. “We didn’t destroy any relationship.”