Ukraine's military has informally paused its long-range strikes on Russian oil refineries after weeks of pressure from US President Donald Trump, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people with knowledge of the operations. Reuters, which reported the Journal's account, said it could not immediately verify the report, and Kyiv has not announced any formal halt.
Source: Reuters via GlobalBankingAndFinance
Ukrainian units carrying out long-range strikes were told in mid-October that the campaign against refineries was effectively on hold once missions already under way were completed, the Journal reported. The unofficial pause is expected to last until after the US midterm elections on November 3, and potentially deeper into November.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has pushed back on the idea of a formal order. He said this week that Ukrainian forces had been more cautious recently but had not been ordered to stop hitting refineries, and that drone units were striking other targets inside Russia, according to the Journal's account reported by Reuters.
The last reported attack on Russian oil infrastructure was on October 20, on a pumping station on the Druzhba pipeline, the reports said. The Journal reported that Trump has blamed the refinery strikes for high fuel prices, which energy experts mostly attribute to the US-Iran war.
According to the Journal, a US envoy repeated the demand for a pause at a meeting with Zelenskiy in Oslo on October 20, and Trump's adviser Jared Kushner pressed Ukrainian officials to halt refinery attacks for 30 days. The pause also coincided with a dispute over Ukraine's access to the Starlink satellite service, which US officials said was not linked to the refinery issue.
Ukraine has long argued that its drone campaign against Russian refineries, fuel depots and other energy sites is one of its few viable responses to years of Russian bombardment, and it has previously said any halt should be reciprocal, with Russia also stopping strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure.