Ukraine is defying President Trump's direct demands to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries, pressing ahead with attacks that are squeezing American diesel prices to record highs — and there's no sign the weapons pipeline is slowing.
This is the foreign policy establishment in a nutshell: a foreign government, armed and funded by American taxpayers, openly ignoring the president's peace posture while ordinary Americans pay the price at the pump. Trump has privately urged Zelenskyy to stop and publicly blamed the refinery strikes for diesel costs. Kyiv doesn't care.
Overnight, Ukrainian forces struck an oil facility in Russia's southern Samara region, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Thursday. They also hit a Russian vessel in the Black Sea and a drone launch and storage site in the Oryol region. Ukraine's long-range campaign has knocked out more than 45% of Russia's refining capacity, according to Ukrainian estimates, prompting fuel rationing and long queues at Russian petrol stations. Russia — traditionally the world's second-largest diesel exporter — has extended its diesel export ban through the end of October, tightening the global supply crunch further.
Trump has been blunt about the domestic cost. "Diesel is really hurt much more, not by the Middle East, but by what's going on in Russia, because those diesel refineries are being knocked out at a pretty alarming rate," he said Wednesday. US diesel prices have hit record highs in recent weeks, driving cost-of-living pressures that have pushed Trump's approval ratings to a career low ahead of next month's midterms.
Energy analysts, however, point to the war in Iran and wider disruption to global oil markets as the leading drivers of the price increases. The Guardian's US edition noted that context but buried it — the preferred narrative puts Ukraine's refinery strikes front and center as Trump's political "headache."
Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst at Ukraine's government-run National Institute for Strategic Studies, made Kyiv's position plain: "There is no rationale for Ukraine to continue exercising restraint while it is being bombarded and major urban areas are under constant attack. We need to deprive Russia of revenue." Zelenskyy has pushed for a US-brokered energy ceasefire, but Putin has shown no interest, vowing instead to intensify strikes on Ukraine.
And intensify he has. A Russian drone struck a school in Kyiv on Thursday — children survived only because they were sheltering in the basement, mayor Vitali Klitschko said. A key bridge in the capital was also hit, forcing suspension of metro and public transport. Kyiv now endures near round-the-clock attacks in what many see as its most desperate period since the invasion's early days. Russia's newer jet-powered drones are proving significantly harder for Ukrainian air defenses to intercept than the slower Shahed-type models.
The question neither outlet answers: who is authorizing the weapons and intelligence that make these long-range refinery strikes possible? Trump says stop. Ukraine says no. The money and arms keep flowing. Someone in Washington is making sure of that — and it isn't the voters.
