Ukraine renewed its strikes on Russian oil refineries after a brief pause brought about by an energy ceasefire unilaterally declared by President Donald Trump.
Ukraine hit Rosneft’s Ryazan refinery Thursday morning, in a region southeast of Moscow. The attack was the first since Trump declared the energy ceasefire Sunday, though Moscow never agreed to the deal. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had avoided attacking Russian energy sites since Trump’s declaration. Zelensky then said Ukraine would no longer obey Trump’s ceasefire in an interview with the Financial Times, in which the Ukrainian president also spoke openly about his anger over the United States allegedly throttling Ukraine’s access to Starlink and intelligence.
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“The block [on attacking refineries] is out,” Zelensky declared. “We’re done.”
The governor of Russia’s Ryazan oblast, Pavel Malkov, said in a Thursday post on Telegram that the region came under a “massive” drone attack.
The Russian Ministry of Defense claimed it intercepted four Flamingo cruise missiles and 69 drones using anti-aircraft missile forces, fighter aircraft, army aviation, and mobile fire groups. It said the fire at the refinery was caused by debris from a drone that was intercepted.
“A fire broke out at the territory of a refinery. A warehouse and vehicles were damaged in the territory of another enterprise in Ryazan,” Malkov said, adding that there were no reported casualties, and the “extent of the material damage is currently being assessed.”
The refinery handles about 5% of Russia’s total refining output.
Trump declared the energy ceasefire in a blanket statement, leaving the exact details unclear. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told reporters that the outline of what targets were off-limits was not specified, so “work in this direction continues.”
A White House official told Axios on Sunday that Trump understood the ceasefire as only pertaining to oil and gas targets. Zelensky complained that this made the truce a mismatched one, as Ukraine has almost no remaining refineries while Russia has many.
Russia continued its own massive attacks against Ukraine. Zelensky said that from midnight on Wednesday to 8 a.m. Thursday, Russia launched over 850 Geran drones at targets all across Ukraine, with many of these hitting their targets.
Ukraine’s new refinery attacks are almost guaranteed to further strain relations with Washington, coming at the worst point of U.S.-Ukraine relations since February 2025, following the infamously testy Oval Office meeting between Trump and Zelensky. Trump, aiming to drive down gas prices ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, announced a deal with Russia last week to inject Russian diesel fuel into the U.S. market. Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries threaten to disrupt this plan.