Trump tells Ukraine to stop targeting Russia’s diesel fuel
(CNN) — US President Donald Trump has urged his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, to stop targeting Russia’s diesel fuel in aerial attacks, claiming that it is “hurting the world.”
A series of long-distance Ukrainian drone strikes has targeted Russia’s fuel infrastructure, hitting major processing plants and significantly reducing its refining capacity.
“Mr Zelensky has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia. Let him go after targets, but not diesel fuel, because he’s causing a shortage of diesel,” Trump said during an official visit to Ireland on Sunday.
“This isn’t done by the Middle East. This is done by what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine,” he claimed.
His comments come as the ongoing war with Iran, which predominantly involves the United States, Iran and Israel, has caused global energy prices to surge. The crisis has particularly affected traffic through the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint.
Global oil prices rose to $108 this week as fighting in the Middle East raises concerns about prolonged supply disruptions. US diesel prices have hit record highs, topping $6 a gallon Friday for the first time ever.
Russia is the world’s second-largest exporter of diesel, behind the US, according to marine intelligence firm Kpler.
Attack near Polish border
Meanwhile both Russia and Ukraine are continuing to escalate their air war, with a Russian drone attack overnight into Sunday hitting a gas station in the northwest Ukrainian town of Yahodyn near the country’s border with Poland, Ukrainian authorities said.
Attacks on gas stations have become so common that one Ukrainian network has started installing mesh cages around its facilities in the capital, Kyiv, to reduce the impact zone during strikes.
The latest attack drew swift condemnation from Ukraine. “Russia’s barbaric strikes at the Ukraine-Poland border crossing point in Yahodyn are not just a continuation of its attacks on our state borders. This is Putin’s terror ‘knocking’ directly on the doors of the EU and NATO,” Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X.
The former prime minister of Sweden, Carl Bildt, said he had been on a train near the Polish border when a train behind his was targeted by a Russian drone. Bildt had been attending an international security conference in Kyiv known as the Yalta European Strategy (YES).
“This wasn’t our train, but the one just minutes after us by the Polish border crossing,” Bildt wrote on X alongside a video appearing to show a drone hitting a nearby train as throngs of passengers evacuate.
The border crossing was briefly shut but was operating normally again by 10 a.m. local time Sunday.
Yahodyn is one of several Ukrainian-Polish border crossings through which a significant amount of military and humanitarian aid is delivered to the country.
Zelensky in the past week alone, Russia had fired more than 2,000 drones at Ukraine, many of them jet-powered models, which are faster and more difficult to intercept than regular drones.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s military said it had struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Tatarstan republic overnight into Sunday.
Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces said that it struck the TANECO refinery in the city of Nizhnekamsk, in an attack carried out alongside the Security Service of Ukraine and the Main Intelligence Directorate.
Tatarstan officials said two civilians were killed and others injured in a Ukrainian attack on Nizhnekamsk.
NATO countries, particularly Ukraine’s neighbors, are on high alert for military drones straying into their airspace.
On Sunday, Lithuania said that a perceived drone sighting in its airspace prompted authorities to close Vilnius airport and NATO to scramble at least one fighter jet.
The air alert was later lifted after the NATO jet identified the sighting as birds, Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Center said. A similar alert in Poland last week also turned out to have been triggered by birds.
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CNN’s John Towfighi contributed to this report.
