Six hundred thousand Ukrainians woke up without power Wednesday after Russia launched 39 ballistic missiles and 120 attack drones at energy infrastructure across Kyiv and Kharkiv — and Volodymyr Zelenskyy's response was to call it an insult to Washington, which is his way of asking for more American money and weapons.
The strikes hit power plants and key substations feeding the capital, with temperatures in Kyiv falling below 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Zelenskyy could have framed this as a reason to negotiate. Instead, he framed it as a reason the United States should dig deeper. "Russia has never before shown such ostentatious disrespect toward the United States," he said, arguing Moscow was deliberately flouting a ceasefire on energy targets that Donald Trump had announced. "Russia does not consider the American president's statements strong." The translation is plain: send more, or look weak.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is actually pulling levers in the other direction. Ukrainian combat units saw their Starlink satellite terminals restricted Tuesday evening, causing the failure of several military missions. Serhii Beskrestnov, a military technology adviser to Zelenskyy, said terminals moving faster than 100mph using the military-grade version of Starlink suddenly lost connectivity. "Our armed forces did not receive a warning about these restrictions and this led to the failure of a number of missions," he said. "It is clear that this action cannot be a coincidence and is connected to the current political situation."
The Guardian's US desk reported the restrictions came as the Trump administration increased pressure on Ukraine to halt long-range strikes against Russia's oil industry. Trump has blamed those strikes for high diesel costs at home — though most analysts, the same outlet noted, say the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has had a far larger impact on global energy prices. Political activist Serhii Sternenko said it was likely SpaceX "resorted to such measures at the request of the Trump administration." Elon Musk, an ally of Trump, previously cut Starlink service to Ukrainian forces during a prior offensive into Russian territory.
For the second night running, Ukraine also received no advance US intelligence warning of incoming Russian strikes — a years-long practice that has now apparently stopped.
In a separate development barely mentioned in the coverage of the attacks, a Ukrainian special forces officer goes on trial in Hamburg Wednesday for the 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Serhii Kuznetsov is accused of detonating incendiary devices on the Baltic seabed in what prosecutors call one of the most brazen acts of sabotage in postwar European history. He and Ukraine deny involvement. The pipeline attack destroyed infrastructure that carried Russian natural gas to Germany — and was initially blamed on Moscow by much of the Western press.
So the picture is this: 600,000 people without heat, a president demanding more from Washington instead of less war, an American administration quietly tightening the leash on military support, and a pipeline sabotage trial that complicates the official narrative. The question isn't whether Ukraine is suffering. It's how long Americans keep paying for a war their government is now quietly trying to wind down — and whether anyone in Washington will ever give them a straight account of what their money has bought.
