Ukraine Resumes Drone Attacks on Russian Oil Refineries Despite Pressure from Trump

Ukraine has resumed attacks on Russian oil facilities, ignoring pressure from US President Donald Trump. Russian media reported that a Ukrainian long-range drone attack set fire to an oil refinery in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region.

Earlier, another large oil refinery owned by Russian energy company Rosneft in the Samara region was also attacked, the report said.

The Wall Street Journal had reported that Ukraine had accepted White House pressure to stop attacks on Russian energy infrastructure. However, Ukrainian officials told the Kyiv Independent that Kyiv did not agree to a demand from the US president's son-in-law Jared Kushner to stop refinery attacks for 30 days.

Russian officials claim Ukraine resumed the attacks from Friday. The Kremlin alleges that Kyiv is now directly ignoring the wishes of the United States.

Trump had previously blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for rising fuel prices on the world market. Last month his administration also lifted US sanctions on Russian diesel.

Zelensky did not comment directly on the recent refinery attacks. However, he said Ukrainian troops attacked a defence equipment factory in Russia's Rostov region. He claimed missiles were made at the factory and that a unit of Russia's Pantsir missile defence system was destroyed in the attack. He described the attacks as Ukraine's ongoing 'long-range sanctions'.

Zelensky said Russia has been continuously attacking the energy infrastructure of Ukrainian cities with drones and ballistic missiles and that Kyiv is being forced to respond. He said Russian attacks on Sunday night damaged the power supply system in four Ukrainian regions and left several hundred thousand families without electricity.

The capital Kyiv also suffered a power disaster. A major thermal power plant was damaged, and on Sunday different parts of the city had no electricity for eight to 10 hours. Zelensky claimed 54,400 Russian troops were killed and wounded in October, the highest Russian military loss in a single month since the full-scale war began. He also claimed Ukraine recaptured 96.2 square kilometres last month, while Russia was able to occupy 10.4 square kilometres.

A six-day local ceasefire in the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky ended on Sunday. The ceasefire, mediated by US First Lady Melania Trump, was in effect from 27 October to 1 November. During the ceasefire, several hundred people in northern Ukraine were reunited with relatives, and both sides described the rescue operation as successful. Ukraine's human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said the ceasefire was an important step for humanitarian initiatives.

US-mediated peace talks are due to resume in Abu Dhabi this month. Before that, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Russian President Vladimir Putin would answer the phone if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said Putin is willing to sit for dialogue with everyone, but that no one has called yet. Since the full-scale war began in 2022, the two leaders have had no direct meeting or phone call; they last met in December 2019 at Normandy Format talks mediated by France and Germany.