Ukraine just refused to stop bombing Russia's oil refineries
3 days ago · 28 September 2026Share
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, gave a press conference with Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, on 17 August 2025. File photo. Dati Bendo / European Union, 2025 / EC - Audiovisual Service · CC BY 4.0
Donald Trump says Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed to ease off strikes on Russian oil refineries.
But Zelenskyy's own position, repeated for weeks, is different. Ukraine will only do that if Russia stops hitting Ukraine's power grid first.
And neither Zelenskyy nor his office has backed up Trump's version.
So what actually happened?
Trump made the claim in the last day or so. He told reporters about a phone call he had with Zelenskyy on 20 September.
Trump says he pushed Zelenskyy on that call to ease off the refineries. He says Zelenskyy replied that Ukraine might do just that.
That's Trump's account of a private call. Kyiv has not confirmed it.
And here's the thing. Zelenskyy has said something different, more than once, since that call happened.
Three days after speaking to Trump, at the United Nations in New York, Zelenskyy said Ukraine was open to an energy ceasefire. But only on one condition.
He said Ukraine would stop, quote "if they will not attack our energy system, our electricity, heating system".
So Zelenskyy is tying any pause to Russia doing the same thing at the same time. Not agreeing to go first.
After that same New York meeting, Zelenskyy said there had been no discussion of Ukraine unilaterally halting refinery strikes.
So the version of the 20 September call Trump is describing now does not match what Zelenskyy said about it at the time.
And this isn't the first time Trump has said this deal exists.
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An oil refinery in Brod, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina. File photo.Petar Milošević · CC BY-SA 4.0
Two weeks ago he posted on social media that Ukraine had agreed not to hit Russian energy targets, and that Russia had agreed to do the same.
Strikes from both sides resumed almost immediately after that.
Three days ago, Ukraine's military confirmed strikes on two Russian refineries, Lukoil-Permnefteorgsintez and Novoshakhtinsk, with fires at both sites.
A Ukrainian strike on 20 September, the same day as the phone call, had already forced the Moscow refinery to stop processing crude oil. That refinery processed around 230,000 barrels of crude a day in 2024.
So Ukraine kept hitting Russian refineries after Trump's first claimed deal. And it has kept hitting them since the second one too.
So why does the White House want this to stop?
It says these strikes risk pushing up diesel and petrol prices on world markets. The average US diesel price has climbed above $6 a gallon for the first time ever, in the past two to three weeks.
But that account leaves something out.
Energy data points to the war between America and Iran, and the wider disruption in the Middle East, as the bigger driver of the global diesel squeeze. Not Ukraine's refinery campaign.
Zelenskyy's answer to why Ukraine keeps hitting the refineries is separate from oil prices. He has said the refineries fund and fuel Russia's war on Ukraine. Hitting them cuts into the money that pays for it.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin's spokesperson, has called a possible energy truce a good idea. But the Kremlin has not committed to actually stopping its own strikes on Ukraine's energy grid.
And five days ago, Zelenskyy said on Telegram that Russia was preparing a new massive attack on Ukraine. Hardly the sign of a side about to pull back.
So what is not known? Whether Zelenskyy made any real commitment on that 20 September call. Whether Russia would actually reciprocate a Ukrainian pause. And how far Trump's pressure campaign has gone beyond that one conversation.
Right now there is a phone call, two competing accounts of what was said on it, and both countries still hitting each other's energy infrastructure.
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