Zelensky Defies Trump, Ukraine Keeps Hitting Russian Refineries
Kyiv turned Zelensky's brief refinery-strike pause into a renewed drone campaign within hours, striking Russia's Ryazan refinery as tension with Washington over intel-sharing grows.
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s declaration that Ukraine was “done” pausing attacks on Russian oil infrastructure translated into action within hours, as Ukrainian drones struck Russia’s Ryazan refinery on Thursday, according to Foreign Policy and OilPrice.
The strike marks a direct break with President Trump’s push for an energy-infrastructure ceasefire between Kyiv and Moscow, a truce Ukrainian officials say never held on the Russian side. Kyiv’s decision to resume the refinery campaign, first reported late Wednesday, has already been covered by this desk, but Thursday’s Ryazan strike is the clearest sign yet that the reversal is operational, not just rhetorical.
The Ryazan strike
Ukrainian drones hit the Ryazan refinery, one of Russia’s larger fuel-processing facilities, touching off a fire at the site, Foreign Policy and OilPrice reported. The facility has been a recurring target in Ukraine’s long-range strike campaign, which aims to curb the refining capacity that supplies both Russia’s military and its export revenue. Thursday’s attack follows a wave of strikes this week that damaged six aircraft at a Russian airfield, underscoring that Kyiv is pressing multiple fronts of its long-range strike campaign simultaneously.
Defying Trump
Foreign Policy frames the strike as a direct rebuff of Trump, who had announced the energy ceasefire as a diplomatic win only for it to collapse within days. Zelensky has said publicly that Russia never stopped hitting Ukrainian power infrastructure during the supposed truce, making the pause one-sided in practice. The Kremlin has separately accused Kyiv of flouting peace efforts by resuming the refinery campaign, a charge Ukrainian officials reject given Russia’s continued strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure throughout the ceasefire window.
Intel and Starlink friction
The refinery strikes land against a backdrop of rising friction between Kyiv and Washington over military support. Ukrainian officials say the Pentagon has stopped sharing some forms of intelligence that Kyiv considers life-saving, according to Defense News. Separately, four Republican senators have signed a letter to the Defense Department’s inspector general demanding an investigation into a sudden Starlink outage that cut Ukraine’s access to intelligence-sharing and communications capability, The Hill reported.
Neither the Pentagon nor the White House has detailed publicly why intelligence-sharing arrangements or Starlink access changed. Ukrainian officials have linked the pattern to broader frustration with how the Trump administration has handled the ceasefire push, which they say gave Russia room to keep striking Ukraine’s grid without a matching consequence.
Why it matters
The combination of resumed refinery strikes, a reported intelligence pullback and the Starlink outage marks one of the more visible strains in the US-Ukraine relationship since the ceasefire effort began. Oil analysts will be watching Russian refinery utilization and export volumes in the coming days for signs of how much damage the renewed strikes are inflicting, while the Senate IG letter puts pressure on the Pentagon to explain the Starlink disruption on the record.
Russia’s government has not issued a detailed public response to the Ryazan strike beyond its earlier accusation that Ukraine is undermining peace efforts. The Trump administration has not commented on the Defense News or Hill reports as of publication.
This is a developing story. America Strikes will update as Washington, Kyiv and Moscow respond.
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