Zelensky Lifts Strike Ban on Russian Refineries: "We've Had Enough"
The polite three-day pause requested by Washington is dead: sitting in the dark while politely sparing the other guy's oil infrastructure wasn't going to last.
The United States asked Kyiv to play nice and stop droning Russian refineries. Ukraine actually obliged and held fire for three days. Russia celebrated this diplomatic gesture by immediately launching dozens of ballistic missiles and swarms of drones straight into Ukrainian power grids, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without electricity.
Naturally, the ban on hitting Russian oil refineries has just been thrown into the shredder.
The behind-the-scenes blackmail was even wilder. American officials outright told Kyiv they would pull intelligence sharing on Russian incoming attacks if the refinery strikes didn't stop. Then military Starlink terminals mysteriously started lagging across the front line — with Elon Musk hinting it wasn't an accident, while Zelensky noted it clearly wasn't a glitch, but a matter of political will.
The counter-offer is straightforward: if anyone wants Russian fuel tanks to stop bursting into flames, they can send more Patriot missiles to protect Ukrainian cities. Otherwise, the drone flights resume immediately.
Asking a nation to freeze without power just to keep global gas prices tidy turned out to be an impossible sell.
Source: FT
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