In the fourth year of Russia's war against Ukraine, Kyiv has ended a period of voluntary restraint and resumed strikes on Russian oil infrastructure — a restraint that was never reciprocated by Moscow and never rewarded by Washington. President Zelenskyy's decision reflects a deeper reckoning: that asymmetric sacrifice in pursuit of diplomacy, when the other parties neither negotiate nor relent, is not patience but surrender. The episode raises an ancient question about the ethics of ceasefire — whether the obligation to hold fire can be one-sided when the fire never stopped falling.
Ukraine resumes Russian refinery strikes as Trump's 'energy ceasefire' collapses
Russian strikes on Ukrainian civilian energy infrastructure have cut power to 600,000 citizens; ongoing military operations continue to affect civilian populations.
The block is out. We're done.
Mark
So Zelenskyy just decided to break the ceasefire unilaterally? That seems like a big move.
Mimi
Not quite. He'd agreed to hold back on energy strikes to give Trump's proposal a chance. But Russia never stopped hitting Ukrainian civilians—600,000 lost power in one day. And the US started withholding intelligence as leverage. At some point, restraint becomes surrender.
Luke
But we should be clear: did Trump formally propose this ceasefire to Zelenskyy, or did Trump just announce it publicly and expect Ukraine to fall in line? The source says Kyiv wasn't notified ahead of time.
Mimi
Right—it was announced to the press, not negotiated. Ukraine went along anyway, hoping it might help. That's the restraint we're talking about.
Mark
And Trump's response was to call it a disgrace?
Mimi
Yes. He also said Zelenskyy was harder to deal with than Putin, which is... a remarkable thing to say about a president whose country is being invaded.
Luke
Trump also lifted sanctions on Russian oil and said he'd buy Russian diesel. That's not just rhetoric—that's material support for the Russian economy during wartime.
Mimi
Exactly. European leaders are saying it's reckless. Meloni pointed out that Trump's own Iran conflict caused the oil price spike he's trying to fix by buying from Russia.
Mark
So what does Zelenskyy actually want now?
Mimi
Patriot air defense systems. He said if the US supplies those, Ukraine will go back to restraint on energy strikes. But without them, Ukraine can't defend itself against the missiles and drones Russia keeps sending.
Luke
And on the Starlink throttling—the source says Trump's team claimed it was technical, Musk said the US military version is government-owned, and Zelenskyy said it was a political choice. We don't actually know who made the decision or why.
Mimi
That's fair. But the effect is clear: Ukraine lost satellite communications access at a moment when it was also losing US intelligence.
Mark
So we're at a point where Ukraine has resumed strikes, Trump is angry, Russia is still attacking civilians, and the US is buying Russian oil. What happens next?
Luke
That's genuinely unclear. Zelenskyy's offer is conditional. Trump's position seems to be that Ukraine should just accept whatever terms Russia offers. And Europe is watching to see if the US alliance actually means anything anymore.
The Pulse
- Ukraine struck oil processing facilities in Ryazan and Saratov on Thursday, ending a self-imposed pause that Moscow had exploited to continue battering Ukrainian civilian power grids — cutting electricity to 600,000 people in a single day.
- The United States, rather than bridging the gap, widened it: Washington withheld battlefield intelligence from Kyiv, leaving Ukrainian forces without advance warning as Russian drones and missiles struck this week.
- A dispute over Starlink access — whether a throttling of satellite internet for Ukrainian forces was a technical glitch or a deliberate act of political pressure — remains unresolved, with Zelenskyy calling it a matter of 'will,' not malfunction.
- Trump responded to Ukraine's renewed strikes by calling them a 'disgrace' and characterizing Zelenskyy as harder to deal with than Putin — a framing that inverted the reality of which party had paused its campaign and which had not.
- Zelenskyy offered a concrete off-ramp: deliver Patriot air defense systems capable of stopping Russian ballistic missiles, and Ukraine will again halt energy strikes — a military condition, not a political demand.
- Trump's decision to lift sanctions on Russian oil and purchase millions of barrels of Russian diesel is being read by European leaders as a financial lifeline to Putin, potentially unraveling years of allied economic pressure in a matter of days.
In the fourth year of Russia's war against Ukraine, Kyiv has ended a period of voluntary restraint and resumed strikes on Russian oil infrastructure — a restraint that was never reciprocated by Moscow and never rewarded by Washington. President Zelenskyy's decision reflects a deeper reckoning: that asymmetric sacrifice in pursuit of diplomacy, when the other parties neither negotiate nor relent, is not patience but surrender. The episode raises an ancient question about the ethics of ceasefire — whether the obligation to hold fire can be one-sided when the fire never stopped falling.
On Thursday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced in an interview with the Financial Times that Ukraine would resume military strikes on Russian oil refineries, ending a period of deliberate restraint he had maintained to give Donald Trump's proposed 'energy ceasefire' room to breathe. 'The block is out,' he said. Strikes on facilities in Ryazan and Saratov followed the same day, with fires reported at the Ryazan site.
The restraint had been unilateral from the start. While Ukraine held back, Russia continued striking Ukrainian civilian infrastructure without pause — cutting power to 600,000 citizens on Wednesday alone. The ceasefire Trump had proposed was never formally negotiated with Kyiv, and Moscow never agreed to it. Ukraine had been honoring a deal it was never party to, while absorbing the consequences of one that was never enforced.
The material costs of alignment with Washington had grown severe. Zelenskyy disclosed that Ukraine had been warned intelligence would be withheld if it did not comply with the ceasefire terms — and that threat had been carried out. When Russian strikes came this week, no advance warning arrived from Washington. Kyiv was left scrambling to rebuild warning networks through European partners. A parallel dispute over Starlink access — whether Ukrainian forces had been deliberately throttled or suffered a technical failure — remained unresolved, with Zelenskyy insisting the disruption was political, not accidental.
Trump's public response was to call Ukraine's renewed strikes a 'disgrace' and to suggest Zelenskyy was less willing to compromise than Putin. Zelenskyy, for his part, offered a clear condition for returning to restraint: supply Ukraine with Patriot air defense systems capable of intercepting Russian ballistic missiles and drones, and the strikes on energy infrastructure would stop. It was a military requirement stated plainly, not a negotiating posture.
The wider picture darkened the calculus further. Trump lifted sanctions on Russian oil and announced plans to buy millions of barrels of Russian diesel, citing fuel prices inflated by his own confrontation with Iran. European leaders, including Italy's Giorgia Meloni, called the move reckless — pointing out that Trump's Iran policy had driven prices up in the first place, and that purchasing Russian fuel would give Putin the financial endurance to continue the war rather than end it. What had taken years of allied pressure to build was being dismantled in days, and Ukraine was being asked to bear the cost of a peace framework that served everyone's interests but its own.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy walked away from the table on Thursday. In an interview with the Financial Times, the Ukrainian president announced that his country would resume military strikes on Russian oil refineries—ending a period of restraint he had imposed in hopes of giving Donald Trump's proposed "energy ceasefire" room to work. "The block is out," Zelenskyy said. "We're done."
The timing was pointed. On the same day Zelenskyy spoke, Ukraine reported attacks on oil processing facilities in Ryazan and Saratov, with fires breaking out at the Ryazan site. These were not the first strikes Ukraine had launched since the war began in February 2022, but they marked a deliberate resumption after Kyiv had voluntarily held back, betting that restraint might create space for diplomatic progress. That bet had failed to pay off.
Russia, meanwhile, had made no such concessions. While Ukraine was honoring Trump's ceasefire proposal—a proposal, notably, that had never been formally negotiated with Kyiv in advance—Moscow continued its assault on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. On Wednesday alone, Russian strikes cut power to 600,000 Ukrainian citizens. The pattern was clear: Ukraine was restraining itself while Russia was not, and the United States was not filling the gap with support.
Trump's response was swift and dismissive. In an interview with Newsmax published Thursday, he called Ukraine's renewed strikes a "disgrace." He went further, suggesting that Zelenskyy was less willing than Putin to compromise and that he found the Ukrainian president "more difficult to deal with than Putin." The framing inverted the actual dynamic on the ground—a country under invasion resuming defensive strikes against an aggressor that had never paused its own campaign.
But the deeper problem, from Kyiv's perspective, was not Trump's rhetoric. It was the material consequences of his decisions. Zelenskyy had warned this week of a "dangerous" lack of US intelligence sharing. Ukrainian military leaders had been told, he said, that if they did not comply with Trump's ceasefire, intelligence would be withheld. That threat had become reality. When Russian drones and missiles struck this week, Ukraine received no advance warning from Washington. The intelligence blackout left Kyiv exposed and scrambling to find alternative sources of warning and air defense from its European allies.
The Starlink situation added another layer of constraint. Trump's administration claimed a technical glitch had throttled SpaceX's satellite internet access for Ukrainian forces. Zelenskyy rejected that explanation flatly. "It was not a technical problem," he told the Financial Times. "It was will." Elon Musk, SpaceX's owner, countered that the US military version of Starlink was owned and operated by the American government, not his company, and that neither he nor SpaceX bore responsibility. The dispute left unresolved the question of who had actually made the decision and why.
Zelenskyy offered a conditional path back to restraint: if the US supplied Patriot air defense systems capable of intercepting Russian ballistic missiles and drones, Ukraine would again halt attacks on Russian energy infrastructure. The offer was a direct statement of what Ukraine needed to survive—not political theater, but a concrete military requirement. Without it, Zelenskyy was saying, the ceasefire was not viable.
The broader context made the stakes even sharper. Trump had lifted sanctions on Russian oil and announced plans to purchase millions of barrels of Russian diesel fuel, citing high fuel prices driven by his own conflict with Iran. European leaders, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, called the move reckless. Meloni pointed out that Trump's own war with Iran had spiked oil prices in the first place, and that his willingness to buy from Putin would only give the Russian president the financial breathing room to continue the invasion rather than end it. Nearly five years of allied pressure on Moscow was being undone in days. The calculation was stark: Trump was extending a lifeline to Putin while cutting off support to Ukraine, all while calling Ukraine the obstacle to peace.
Notable Quotes
The block is out. We're done.— Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in interview with Financial Times
It was not a technical problem, it was will.— Volodymyr Zelenskyy, regarding Starlink throttling
I find Zelenskyy to be more difficult to deal with than Putin.— Donald Trump, in interview with Newsmax
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War & Conflict