Ukrainian drones attacked the Rosneft oil refinery in Russia's Ryazan region early Thursday, sparking a fire at a plant that feeds fuel to Moscow and accounts for almost 5% of Russia's total refining capacity, Ryazan Governor Pavel Malkov said in a post on Telegram. A senior Ukrainian official confirmed the strike — the first on a Russian energy facility since President Donald Trump announced an energy ceasefire on Sunday.
"The block (on attacking refineries) is out. We're done." — President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an interview with the Financial Times published Thursday
Zelenskyy told the Financial Times that Ukraine had paused its refinery strikes for three days to comply with Washington's wishes, but Russia never stopped hitting Ukrainian energy sites — attacks he said left 600,000 people without power on Wednesday. Overnight, he said, Russia launched more than 850 drones at 15 regions of Ukraine; Kyiv said its air defenses downed 536, and three civilians were killed in the Kirovohrad region.
Kyiv's anger is aimed at Washington as much as Moscow. Ukrainian officials say they received no U.S. early-warning alerts for incoming Russian ballistic missiles in recent days, and that Starshield — the military version of Elon Musk's Starlink satellite service — was slowed across the country, hampering frontline operations and medium-range strikes. Zelenskyy said the slowdown was presented as a technical glitch. "It was not a technical problem, it was the will," he told the FT. Musk said on Wednesday that Starshield is owned and controlled by the U.S. government, which decides on any speed limits — and in a separate post called for Zelenskyy to "go."
Trump has said the United States has not stopped sharing intelligence, telling reporters: "We are helping them, and we are sharing intel; we want the war to end." But on Saturday he called for Ukraine to replace Zelenskyy and railed against the refinery strikes, one day after announcing a diesel supply deal with Russia. Zelenskyy told Piers Morgan on Wednesday night that he felt betrayed by the deal: "Really, yes, between us."
Moscow answered by insisting the pause never existed: Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Ukraine never stopped striking refineries, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the attacks "a direct and crude challenge to President Trump." Zelenskyy said he could halt energy strikes again only in return for more U.S.-made Patriot interceptors — the "minimum" he could accept. "Russia is dragging out the war, so our long-range operations will continue," he said.
The episode lays bare the difficulty of Trump's push to end the war: one side says it held its fire for three days, the other kept bombing Ukrainian power plants — and until both sides hold their fire, the president's path to peace runs through wreckage.
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