Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is unhappy with the US administration’s request to refrain from attacking Russian oil refineries (refineries), the Washington Post (WP) reported.
“When Vice President (US Vice President Kamala – ed.) Harris met privately with Volodymyr Zelensky on the margins of the Munich Security Conference in February, she told the Ukrainian leader what he did not want to hear: refrain from attacks on Russian refineries. The request <…> made Zelenskyy and his closest aides angry,” the newspaper quoted unnamed officials as saying.
The publication noted that Vladimir Zelenskyy “brushed off” Harris’s words, not considering them a unified position of US President Joe Biden’s administration. But in the following weeks, Washington repeated its demand more than once.
U.S. officials are confident that strikes on refineries could lead to a rise in global energy prices, which would also possibly “weaken European support for the allocation of aid to Ukraine.” In addition, the benefit of such strikes from a military point of view is also “questionable”, says the Washington Post.
Earlier, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that “everyone survives as they can” and suggested that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil refineries in exchange for the transfer of several Patriot air defence systems by its Western allies.
