Ukraine said Thursday it struck a Russian oil refinery and damaged six Russian warplanes at an airfield, resuming attacks on Russian energy infrastructure after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy voiced anger at what he called a “dangerous” withdrawal of U.S. intelligence.
Pavel Malkov, governor of Russia’s Ryazan region, said in a Telegram post that a major Ukrainian drone attack sparked a fire at an oil refinery. “The material damage is now being assessed. Emergency services are working at the scene,” he said.
Separately, Ukraine’s military general staff said on Telegram it had damaged six Russian Su-34M aircraft in an overnight strike on the Borisoglebsk airfield in Russia’s Voronezh region. It said it had confirmed damage of varying degrees to all six planes and that it used its Neptune coastal missile system in the attack.
Six Su-34M jets damaged
The Su-34M is a large fighter-bomber that costs tens of millions of U.S. dollars apiece. Russia frequently uses the aircraft to drop devastating glide bombs on Ukrainian cities near the front line. Reuters said it could not independently verify the battlefield reports.
The refinery strike ended a pause in Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries. Kyiv had refrained from such strikes since U.S. President Donald Trump’s surprise announcement Sunday of an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine. Trump had blamed the refineries for raising diesel prices on global markets.
Zelenskiy had expressed growing frustration with Russia’s continued attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, which he said Wednesday had left 600,000 people without power. He warned that Ukraine would not suspend its own attacks indefinitely if Russia did not reciprocate. He also criticized what he described as Trump’s favoritism toward Russia.
In an interview with the Financial Times published Thursday, Zelenskiy said Ukraine’s patience had run out. “The block (on attacking refineries) is out. We’re done,” he told the newspaper.
He criticized Washington’s eagerness to strike business deals with Moscow and Trump’s apparent admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Saturday, Trump called for Ukraine to replace Zelenskiy and railed against Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil infrastructure. That came one day after he announced a diesel supply deal with Russia aimed at lowering fuel prices, which have soared since the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran began in February.
Despite Ukraine’s suspension of refinery attacks, Ukrainian officials complained they had not received any U.S. 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 front-line operations and medium-range strikes against Russian military sites.
Musk said Wednesday in a post on X that Starshield, the military version of Starlink, was owned and controlled by the U.S. government, which decided on any limits on speed.
Zelenskiy has said Ukrainian military officials were warned by their U.S. 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 Starlink failures 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 to repair relations with the White House, he said he could agree only if he were given more U.S.-made Patriot interceptors in return. He called that the “minimum” that would be acceptable.
