LONDON (The Telegraph) - Ukraine defied U.S. President Donald Trump by resuming its attacks on Russian oil refineries.
Long-range drones struck the Kstovo oil refinery on Saturday night which Ukrainian media reported was one of Russia’s largest oil facilities.
Russian state media confirmed Ukraine had struck an “industrial enterprise” East of Moscow. There were also reports of a significant strike on a refinery in Samara, which is owned by Rosneft, Russia’s state energy giant.
Kyiv has repeatedly struck Russian oil and gas sites in what it says is fair retaliation for Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.
But Trump has been pressing Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, to stop such attacks, blaming them for rising diesel costs that analysts have attributed to the war on Iran.
The U.S. president is under severe pressure because of domestic fuel prices before the U.S. midterm elections on Tuesday.
On Sunday, Zelensky said he would be prepared to stop targeting refineries if Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to do the same and if the Pentagon supplied Ukraine with Patriot missiles.
“We said that if you want us not to attack Russia’s refineries, they have not to attack our energy system,” Zelensky told Fox News.
“Another alternative: give us Patriot missiles. We will find money, not just aid,” he added.
It comes as the longest truce of the Ukraine war ended on Sunday after Russia refused the offer of an extension, Ukrainian officials said.
The rare pause in fighting in Kherson, which began early on Tuesday, enabled a humanitarian mission to the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky.
Neither side reported violations after the truce began in what one Ukrainian politician described as the “biggest de-escalation since 2022”.
“The ceasefire, which was in effect from October 27 to November 1, has ended,” said Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine’s parliament commissioner for human rights.
He called the temporary truce “an important step in our joint humanitarian efforts” with Russia.
U.S.-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine are set to resume this month, having been effectively frozen since the US and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran in February.
Oleksandr Prokudin, the Kherson regional governor, warned local people to be particularly vigilant when the ceasefire ended and to “respond immediately to warnings about Russian attacks”.
Ukraine’s air force and anti-disinformation center said they suspected the country’s air raid alert system had been hacked, after false alerts of a radiation threat appeared on the application.
“The Air Alarm application has probably been subjected to hostile interference,” the force said in a message, adding, “There is no radiation threat.
”Yuriy Ignat, a spokesman for Ukraine’s air force, confirmed that the app had been hacked.
SPRAVDI, Ukraine’s Centre for Strategic Communications, blamed Russia for the hack in a post on its X account.
A separate app, which deals specifically with the Ukrainian capital, is still working normally, the Kyiv city authorities said.
Ukrainian strikes killed five people in Russian-occupied Ukraine between late Saturday and Sunday afternoon, Russian-installed authorities said.
Both Russia and Ukraine deny targeting civilians.