Zelensky Lifts the Refinery Ban, the Kremlin Says Kyiv Is Defying Washington, and Kallas Calls It Self-Defence

Volodymyr Zelensky told the Financial Times on 15 October that Ukraine’s pause on strikes against Russian oil refineries is over, and his reason is that Russia kept attacking Ukrainian energy sites during it. “The block is out. We’re done,” the Ukrainian president said, according to Euronews. Ukrainian drones hit a refinery in Russia’s Ryazan region the same morning, AP reported.

The pause had run three days since Donald Trump declared an “ENERGY CEASEFIRE” on 11 October, an announcement this site examined at the time. By Thursday the Kremlin, the Russian foreign minister and the EU’s top diplomat had each answered Zelensky with a different argument.

Ukraine says it paused at Washington’s request while Russia kept hitting Ukrainian energy sites. The Kremlin says no truce ever existed and that Kyiv is cutting across American peace efforts. The EU’s foreign policy chief says the strikes are lawful self-defence. Trump’s ceasefire had no published scope, start time or monitor.

The Financial Times interview was published hours before the EU summit in Brussels. Ukrinform reported that Ukraine stopped hitting refineries for three days at Washington’s request while Russia went on attacking Ukraine’s energy system. In its translation he said: “The ban is lifted. We’ve had enough.”

In a Piers Morgan interview that aired late Wednesday, he spoke about Washington. “It’s painful when President Trump chooses one side, not our side,” he said, according to CNN. “But we are OK that he’s in the middle.” He also said Russia had launched more than 850 drones, AP reported, a barrage that came, in his words, “precisely at a time when the speed of our defensive capabilities is being artificially restricted.”

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, had asked earlier in the week what the truce covered. “What was announced? What are the boundaries of the energy ceasefire?” he said, Euronews reported. On Thursday, AP reported, he said Ukraine had never stopped its refinery strikes. Interfax reported him saying that the announced strikes contradict American efforts to start a peace process.

Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, was reported by Interfax as saying that Zelensky is challenging Trump by announcing that the strikes will continue.

Kaja Kallas, the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, told Euronews in an interview published on 15 October: “If we look at international law, it is clear that [hitting refineries] is in defence of Ukraine,” She added: “If we look at the big picture, the majority of the financing for this war comes from oil.”

Trump announced a diesel arrangement with Putin on 9 October, and Russia partially lifted its diesel export ban the next day, according to reporting by Ukrainska Pravda that cites TASS. On 11 October he announced the energy ceasefire. On 13 October Maksym Beznosiuk and William Dixon of the Atlantic Council wrote in UkraineAlert that “Russia responded by bombing a series of Ukrainian power plants.” On 15 October Zelensky lifted the ban.

Peskov asked what the ceasefire covered, then said Ukraine had never stopped. Moscow has not said it accepted the truce. Lavrov and Peskov present the strikes as a challenge to Trump and to his peace effort. Zelensky says Ukraine honoured a request for three days and was not matched. Kallas says oil revenue pays for the war.

NPR quoted Majda Ruge of the European Council on Foreign Relations saying that “Trump’s personal desire for economic reset with Russia and announcing business deals has really been the only consistent element” in his approach. NPR reported that no one appeared to know of the diesel deal in advance. The refinery strikes Zelensky has now resumed are aimed at the output that deal depends on.

Zelensky also criticised a “dangerous” withdrawal of US intelligence sharing, Bloomberg reported, which, CNN reports, Trump says has not stopped; this site has followed that dispute. A Washington response to the refinery decision would be the first marker. The outcome of the Brussels summit is the second. Further Russian reports of refinery damage in the coming days are the third.

The 11 October ceasefire never had a start time, a target list or a monitor. With the ban lifted, nothing is left to enforce.