Ukraine Hits Russian Refineries Again
Drones set the Kstovo refinery east of Moscow on fire after a strike on a refinery in Samara, though the White House had pressed Kyiv to pause such attacks. Ukraine says it never agreed to a pause.
Ukrainian drones set fire to the Kstovo oil refinery in Russia's Nizhny Novgorod region overnight, according to Russian state media and Ukrainian monitoring channels, after a strike on a refinery in the Samara region. Nizhny Novgorod's governor, Gleb Nikitin, said more than 100 drones were shot down over his region and reported "significant damage" to an industrial facility. The strikes came after the White House pressed Kyiv to stop hitting Russian energy sites, a demand President Trump has tied to the price of diesel ahead of the midterm elections. The Wall Street Journal had reported that Ukraine agreed to a pause; Ukrainian officials told the Kyiv Independent they never accepted a 30-day pause proposed by Jared Kushner. A Kremlin aide said Kyiv was "simply ignoring" Trump. Russia, for its part, struck power systems in four Ukrainian regions overnight, cutting electricity to hundreds of thousands of households. A local truce around the Russian-held town of Oleshky ended Sunday night.
Russian state media and Ukrainian monitoring channels said drones set fire to the Kstovo refinery in the Nizhny Novgorod region, east of Moscow, overnight. Governor Gleb Nikitin said more than 100 drones were destroyed over the region and reported "significant damage" to an industrial facility in the Kstovo district, with no casualties in early information. The refinery is operated by Lukoil. The Kstovo fire followed a strike on Friday on the Novokuybyshevsk refinery in the Samara region.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Ukraine had given in to White House pressure to stop hitting Russian energy infrastructure. Ukrainian officials told the Kyiv Independent that Kushner, the president's son-in-law and envoy, had suggested a 30-day pause in refinery strikes but that Ukraine never agreed to it. "They have once again disobeyed him and are simply ignoring him," Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov said. Zelenskyy has not publicly acknowledged the refinery strikes. He said Ukraine hit a defense plant in Russia's Rostov region and destroyed a Pantsir air defense system there.
Ukraine's air force said Russia launched 433 drones overnight and that 371 were shot down or jammed. Zelenskyy said attacks on power infrastructure in four regions left hundreds of thousands of households without electricity.
The local ceasefire around Oleshky, on the Russian-held left bank of the Dnipro River across from Kherson, ran from October 27 and was set to end at 10:59 p.m. Ukraine time on Sunday. It let hundreds of residents leave the besieged town. Kremlin officials said Vladimir Putin was willing to speak to Zelenskyy directly by phone. Talks involving Russia, Ukraine and the United States are expected to follow.