Zelenskyy resumes strikes on Russian oil refineries after accusing Moscow of breaching energy ceasefire

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the Financial Times that Kyiv will resume strikes on Russian oil refineries after Western restrictions reduced Ukraine's access to intelligence and satellite communications.

Zelenskyy said Ukraine had paused attacks on energy infrastructure for three days to comply with a U.S. request, but that the pause is now over after he concluded Moscow had violated the ceasefire Washington announced for energy targets. The Financial Times interview, reported in the sources, is the basis for Zelenskyy’s account of U.S. pressure and Kyiv’s decision.

Two distinct threads underlie Zelenskyy’s statement. First, he accused U.S. decisions to curb intelligence sharing and throttle Starlink access during a period of intensified Russian bombardment as constraining Kyiv’s options; that claim appears explicitly in the Moldovan report citing the FT interview.

Second, openthemagazine.com and the FT coverage say Washington announced an immediate energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine on October 11, which Kyiv says Moscow breached, prompting the president to abandon the pause. The two threads intersect in Zelenskyy’s framing that Western limits on support coincided with continued Russian strikes.

The sources offer different emphases on the scale of attacks during that interval. openthemagazine.com reported that Russia launched more than 850 Shahed drones in a single early-morning wave and that six people were killed in those attacks; moldova1.md said Russian bombardment continued through the pause and cited a figure of more than 100 civilians killed in a single week.

Both accounts appear as claims in the reporting; the higher weekly civilian toll is stated in moldova1.md but not confirmed elsewhere in the . Zelenskyy also criticised Washington’s diplomatic approach in the FT interview, according to moldova1.md, naming U.S. diplomatic pushes for commercial arrangements with Moscow and President Donald Trump’s admiration for Vladimir Putin.

That criticism is presented as Zelenskyy’s view and is reported by the outlet that summarised the FT material; none of the other supplied texts independently corroborates the characterisation of U.S. diplomacy.

The decision to resume strikes is presented in the sources as Kyiv’s operational choice after concluding the pause had failed to halt Russian attacks; the sources do not contain battlefield details about planned or completed Ukrainian strikes on refineries after the announcement.

The Financial Times interview is the primary on-the-record source for Zelenskyy’s description of U.S. pressure and Kyiv’s rationale, and the other supplied pieces recount or summarise that interview and related reporting on drone and civilian casualties.

Taken together, the reporting documents a deterioration in Ukrainian confidence in continued Western operational support during intense Russian bombardment and a resulting policy reversal on attacks against Russian energy infrastructure.

The pieces show Kyiv tying its pause to a U.S. request and putting the pause back on after assessing that Moscow had not respected the energy-focused ceasefire announced by Washington, while also highlighting Zelenskyy’s public criticism of U.S. diplomatic signals and of President Donald Trump’s posture toward Vladimir Putin.

The facts in the sources leave unreported several operational details readers would expect: the articles do not provide independently verified casualty totals that reconcile the different figures cited, nor do they include confirmation of whether Ukrainian strikes on refineries resumed immediately or later, or of the operational effects of any resumed strikes.