Latest (06:51 ET Thursday): Ukraine’s General Staff said on Thursday it had damaged six Russian Su-34M fighter bombers in an overnight strike on the Borisoglebsk airfield in Russia’s Voronezh region, more than 340 kilometres from Ukrainian controlled territory, and that the attack used Ukraine’s Neptune coastal missile system, causing secondary explosions and a fire and destroying flight support equipment. Reuters, which reported the statement, said it could not independently verify the battlefield claims. Defence Blog reported that satellite imagery published by the Ukrainian aviation monitoring channel AviVector showed four of the jets destroyed and two badly damaged, and that pro-Russian Telegram channels had also acknowledged the losses; there has been no official Russian confirmation of the airfield damage. Russia’s defence ministry separately reported a Ukrainian attempt on an oil refinery in Ryazan, saying drone debris caused a fire.
Ukraine has resumed its attacks on Russian refineries. The governor of the Ryazan region, Pavel Malkov, said on Thursday that a major Ukrainian drone attack had sparked a fire at an oil refinery in his region, with damage still being assessed, hours after President Volodymyr Zelenskiy told the Financial Times that the pause on attacking refineries was over.
Kyiv had held off refinery strikes since President Trump announced an energy ceasefire on Sunday, a deal Trump paired with a diesel supply arrangement with Russia meant to ease fuel prices. Zelenskiy said Russia never reciprocated: Russian attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure continued, and he said on Wednesday they had left 600,000 people without power. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on Wednesday that Ukrainian drones had already hit refineries in the Saratov and Ryazan regions on October 14, a claim carried at the time only by Russian outlets.
The break is also with Washington. Zelenskiy said Ukrainian forces had received no US early warning alerts for incoming ballistic missiles in recent days and that the military version of Starlink had been slowed across the country, which he attributed to US pressure to halt the energy strikes rather than to any technical fault. Elon Musk said on Wednesday that Starshield, the military service, is owned and controlled by the US government, which decides on any speed limits. Asked whether Ukraine would halt energy strikes again to repair relations with the White House, Zelenskiy said the minimum he would accept in return was more US made Patriot interceptors.
Refinery strikes are the lever Kyiv has used against Russian fuel supply all autumn, and their return lands in a product market with little slack: the International Energy Agency warned this week that diesel markets could stay tight into 2027, and Washington’s own diesel deal with Moscow was built on the premise that Ukrainian attacks were part of what had driven prices up.