Zelenskyy ties halt in refinery strikes to US interceptor supply
Zelenskyy accuses Trump of pushing Ukraine toward capitulation to Russia
Published
Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine would stop striking Russian refineries if the United States sends more interceptor missiles. He also said President Trump is pushing Ukraine to capitulate to Russia.
The offer marks a shift from Zelenskyy's position on October 11, when he said a halt depended on Russia de-escalating first, not on US supply.
A Ukrainian official said Ukraine had 10 interceptor missiles as of October 7, with resupply irregular since May. CNN has reported that Ukraine has exhausted its stock of US-made Patriot missiles, the system it has relied on most against Russian ballistic strikes. The refinery campaign has widened in range: Ukrainian drones reached St. Petersburg on October 17, beyond recent strikes on refineries at Omsk, Samara and Ryazan. Russia's Ryazan refinery has halted one of its primary units since an October 15 drone attack, according to two sources. A Ukrainian official said that strike came in response to Russian missile and drone attacks that broke an energy truce pushed by Washington. The Financial Times has reported that Washington is considering unfreezing Russian assets to revive talks, even as fresh refinery strikes complicate that effort. Crude oil pushed toward $100 a barrel on October 16, with the United States Oil Fund climbing 1.47% to $159.62, after a prior 3.03% jump tied partly to a Russian refinery outage.
Zelenskyy's new condition links Ukrainian restraint directly to US interceptor supply rather than to Russian behaviour, and it comes as Ukraine's Patriot stock has reportedly dwindled to a handful of missiles. That makes the interceptor request a concrete near-term test of Washington's resupply commitment rather than another statement of process. Pairing the request with an accusation that Trump is pushing capitulation also hardens Kyiv's public stance toward Washington's diesel-and-ceasefire diplomacy, adding friction to a negotiating track where the gap between US inducements and Russian preconditions has already been widening.