Jens Asbjørn Bøgen
Russian missile barrages have again plunged Ukrainian cities into blackout, and Kyiv’s brief gesture of restraint has drawn no echo from Moscow.
President Volodymyr Zelensky has lifted Ukraine’s self-imposed ban on long-range strikes against Russian oil refineries, telling the Financial Times that Kyiv’s three-day attempt to accommodate a Trump-brokered “energy ceasefire” is over.
“The block [on attacking refineries] is out. We’re done,” he said in the interview published October 15. In his Ukrainian-language remarks carried by domestic outlets, the same phrase was rendered as “We’ve had enough.”
The president said Ukraine held fire on Russian energy targets for three days to comply with Washington’s wishes, while Russia kept hitting Ukrainian cities.
More than 600,000 homes were left without electricity after the latest wave of Russian strikes, he said.
Zelensky set a sharp condition for any renewed restraint: additional Patriot interceptor systems from the United States, which he described to the FT as the bare minimum trade.
Starlink slowdown and a withheld warning
During the pause, Zelensky said, Ukrainian forces lost US early-warning alerts on incoming ballistic missiles and saw Starlink service degrade across the country, with SpaceX’s military Starshield terminals also restricted.
“It was not a technical problem, it was the will,” he told the FT. On the Starlink restrictions, he said the decision “will bring a lot of human losses. People will die.”
Zelensky also said US military counterparts told their Ukrainian colleagues directly: “if you will not stop [the energy strikes], we will block intelligence.”
A direct break with Trump’s diesel push
The announcement reverses a posture Kyiv had held since President Donald Trump declared a Russia-Ukraine “energy ceasefire” on October 11, a claim Zelensky said at the time was “news for me.”
Trump’s push came alongside a deal with Moscow expected to bring 300,000 tonnes of diesel to global markets in October, 500,000 tonnes in November, and 1 million tonnes in December, with a US Treasury general license suspending sanctions on Russian oil products until April 2027.
In an interview with Piers Morgan on Wednesday, Zelensky called the arrangement “a simple victory” for the Kremlin.
The agreement has drawn bipartisan opposition in Washington, with senators arguing it conflicts with the 2022 congressional ban on Russian energy imports.
Half of Russia’s refining already down
Ukraine’s long-range drone campaign has pounded Russia’s downstream sector throughout 2026. Ukraine’s defense ministry said late October 4 that strikes on refineries in Moscow, Yaroslavl, Ust-Luga, Perm, Saratov and Syzran had put 51% of Russia’s refining capacity out of action, a figure the ministry acknowledged could not be independently verified. Putin said on October 1 the strikes had cost Russia roughly 1% of GDP.
Trump has publicly tied the Ukrainian strikes to higher global diesel prices and asked Kyiv to stop. The US Treasury license allowing Russian diesel supplies to global markets runs through April 2027.
