Zelensky Lifts the Block on Striking Russian Refineries
Ukraine will resume long-range strikes on Russian oil refineries, the president said in London, ending a three-day pause he had accepted at Washington’s request. “The block is out. We’re done,” he said. He also said American officials had told Ukrainian commanders that intelligence would be cut off if the strikes continued, and rejected the idea that the Starlink slowdown was a fault: “It was not a technical problem, it was the will.”
Two strands are being pulled together here and they are worth keeping apart. Elon Musk says the restriction was not his: Starshield, the military version of the network, is “owned and controlled by the US government” and “any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS”. Separately, terminals moving faster than 100mph lost connectivity from Tuesday night, which hits drone operations inside Ukraine. It does not touch the refinery strikes at all, because the network does not work inside Russia and Kyiv is barred from using it against targets there. So the two are linked politically, by what Mr Zelensky says he was promised and what he received, rather than mechanically. His price for holding off again is more American Patriot interceptors, which he calls the minimum he is asking for. Dmitry Peskov says the energy truce “was not specified in detail, so it cannot be claimed that Russia is failing to observe it”. Russian strikes hit Ukrainian energy sites again overnight and killed two people in the Dnipropetrovsk region. He addresses European Union leaders in Brussels today.