KYIV, Ukraine\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Ukrainian forces hit two of Russia\u2019s biggest oil refineries overnight in its latest long-range strikes, officials said Wednesday, as Kyiv deepened its economic, military and diplomatic pressure on Moscow.<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s almost daily long-range drone and missile strikes using domestically developed weapons have battered Russian oil facilities for months. The operation has brought a fuel crisis that is embarrassing the Kremlin more than four years after Russia\u2019s all-out invasion of its neighbor.<\/p>\n
The overnight attacks started fires at a Lukoil refinery in Russia\u2019s Perm region, more than 900 miles from Ukraine, and a refinery in Ryazan, about 180 miles from the border, Ukraine\u2019s Security Service and General Staff said in separate statements.<\/p>\n
The refineries have a combined annual production capacity of around 220 million barrels of oil, according to Ukraine, and make a vital contribution to Russia\u2019s military effort and its government revenue.<\/p>\n
It was not immediately possible to independently verify the claims. Ryazan Gov. Pavel Malkov said only that six people were taken to hospital after a drone attack. He said drone debris caused fires at unidentified \u201cindustrial sites.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russian online retailer Wildberries, a major supplier likened to Amazon that Ukraine has targeted in recent days, said it evacuated employees from a facility in Ryazan but provided no further details.<\/p>\n
Russia has sophisticated air defenses but its vast territory is hard to comprehensively cover.<\/p>\n
The attacks came hours after President Volodymyr Zelensky visited Washington on Tuesday for talks with President Trump to push for more vital American help for Ukraine\u2019s fight against its much bigger enemy.<\/p>\n
\u201cRussia must feel that every day of this war will only come at a higher cost for it. We need to weaken the aggressor and keep up the pressure to bring an end to this war closer,\u201d Zelensky said on social media.<\/p>\n
Ukraine\u2019s recent high-profile successes against Russia have impressed Washington and helped restore U.S. goodwill after Trump\u2019s reluctance at the start of his second term to keep supporting Kyiv. That stance had raised the specter of Ukraine and Europe having to stand up to Russian aggression alone.<\/p>\n
Zelensky says he had a good meeting with Trump<\/p>\n
Zelensky said he had a \u201cgood meeting\u201d with the American president, and Trump described the meeting as a \u201cGreat Honor.\u201d The talks took place behind closed doors.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany things were discussed. The meeting went very well!\u201d Trump wrote on Truth Social.<\/p>\n
Zelensky said he also had a meeting in Washington with representatives of both parties in the U.S. Senate, with more than 60 senators in attendance, as Ukraine pushes for more sanctions on Russia. He also met with representatives of Lockheed Martin, days after he welcomed a delegation from Raytheon to Kyiv.<\/p>\n
The U.S. weapons manufacturers are a crucial source of sophisticated weaponry, such as Patriot air defense systems, that Ukraine hopes to make itself. Trump said earlier this month he would grant Ukraine licenses to manufacture the Patriots it needs to counter Russia\u2019s ballistic missiles.<\/p>\n
Zelensky says Ukraine is discussing joint production and technology exchange with both Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.<\/p>\n
Ukraine is ready to share its cutting-edge \u2014 and battle-tested \u2014 drone technology. Its swift technical innovation has paid dividends as it helps pin down Russia\u2019s bigger army on the front line and denies it supplies by hitting rear areas.<\/p>\n
That has impressed countries around the world. Matthew Whitaker, the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, said during a visit to Ukraine earlier this week: \u201cFrom reconnaissance and logistics to precision strikes, Ukraine has shown the world how unmanned systems can give smaller forces a decisive edge.\u201d<\/p>\n
U.S. envoys to visit Kyiv but no date set<\/p>\n
Prospects for a settlement to stop the fighting appear dim, despite a yearlong diplomatic push by the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
But U.S. officials also agreed that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the president\u2019s main envoys, would make a trip to Kyiv sometime in the future, according to a person familiar with the talks who was granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door meeting.<\/p>\n
Maj. Gen. Mykhailo Drapatyi, the new commander-in-chief of Ukraine\u2019s military, said in a social media post on Wednesday that he had held his first phone conversation with Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Commander of U.S. European Command.<\/p>\n
\u201cI outlined my vision of Ukraine\u2019s victory and the capabilities required to achieve it,\u201d said Drapatyi, who was appointed last week as part of a government reshuffle.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this stage of the war, we must strengthen operations across multiple domains, prevent enemy infiltration into our defensive lines, and expand both long-range and medium-range precision strikes against the enemy,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Ukraine says it hits over 200 Russian vessels in 3 weeks<\/p>\n
Ukrainian units also have struck 201 Russian vessels over the past three weeks in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov, which border both countries, a senior military official said.<\/p>\n
The tally doesn\u2019t include vessels hit by Ukraine\u2019s Security Service and other military groups, a Ukrainian military commander who could be identified only by his call sign Magyar, in keeping with the rules of the Ukrainian military, said late Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian forces also struck a naval base used Russia\u2019s Black Sea, according to the General Staff.<\/p>\n
It reported other strikes on a radar station in Russia\u2019s Bryansk region on the border and on a drone launch site and a road bridge in the occupied part of Ukraine\u2019s eastern Donetsk region.<\/p>\n
The Russian Defense Ministry reported Wednesday that its air defenses shot down 295 Ukrainian drones overnight above a number of Russian regions and occupied Crimea.<\/p>\n
Russian glide bombs struck the northeastern city of Kharkiv and 17 other places in the region of the same name over the previous 24 hours, wounding 11 people, the head of the regional military administration, Oleh Syniehubov, said.<\/p>\n
Arhirova and Hatton write for the Associated Press. Hatton reported from Lisbon, Portugal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KYIV, Ukraine\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Ukrainian forces hit two of Russia\u2019s biggest oil refineries overnight in its latest long-range strikes, officials said…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1138,158,8276,1038,413,8277,25,6342,177,26,314,41,854,2480,170],"class_list":["post-22452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-black-sea","tag-kyiv","tag-lukoil-refinery","tag-meeting","tag-missile-strike","tag-recent-day","tag-russia","tag-talk","tag-trump","tag-ukraine","tag-war","tag-washington","tag-wednesday","tag-week","tag-zelensky"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ukraine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}