Trump: “Not a big fan of Zelensky” – Kyiv resumes strikes on refineries
Zelensky lifts the pause on strikes against Russian oil refineries as Trump lashes out at him on TV. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov rules out a ceasefire in Baku.
Archive image · Photo: Пресс-служба Госдумы РФ / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has lifted restrictions on strikes against Russian oil refineries. “The block is out. We're done,” he told the Financial Times. After Trump's unilaterally announced “energy ceasefire” of 11 October, Kyiv refrained from such attacks for three days, but Russia kept hitting Ukraine's power grid. Ukraine could only agree to halt strikes on Russian energy facilities if it received more Patriot interceptors – that was the “minimum”, Zelensky said.
US President Donald Trump responded with sharp criticism on Newsmax. “He says he wants to settle, but he doesn't. I'm not a big fan of Zelensky,” Trump said on Thursday. Zelensky was “not a good guy” for the US to deal with, he added. Trump blames Ukraine's refinery strikes for rising fuel prices, a claim experts dispute. Zelensky had earlier said Trump's advisers were wrong; he did not immediately respond to the latest remarks.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov rejected a ceasefire. Speaking after the summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Baku, he said, according to Interfax, that there would be no ceasefire allowing Kyiv to rearm. Moscow's objectives had not changed. Lavrov called Zelensky's opposition to the Washington-Moscow diesel deal “a direct challenge to President Trump”.