Zelenskyy Reports New Strikes, Sets Terms for U.S. Halt Plan

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reported new strikes on a Russian refinery and drone sites Sept. 15, one day after offering conditional support for a U.S. proposal to halt infrastructure attacks.

Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces had achieved “new results” involving the refinery in Syzran. He also reported strikes on a drone production facility in Taganrog and a drone preparation and launch site in the Oryol region.

Unspecified targets in the Black Sea were also hit, he wrote. The post did not identify those targets or describe the extent of the damage.

Reuters reported that the governor of Russia’s Samara region acknowledged a strike on an industrial facility but did not identify it. The Taganrog governor said a warehouse operated by e-commerce company Ozon was struck.

Those accounts did not confirm Zelenskyy’s descriptions of the targets. The specific targets and extent of the damage could not be independently verified.

Zelenskyy presented the Ukrainian operations as a response to continuing Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy sector, logistics and critical infrastructure. He thanked Ukrainian forces for the effectiveness of what he called “long-range sanctions.”

In a separate Sept. 14 post on X, Zelenskyy described a “strong U.S. proposal” for a mutual halt to strikes on critical infrastructure.

Ukraine is ready to support de-escalation if the proposal becomes a first step toward ending Russian strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure and Ukraine’s strikes in response, he wrote.

Zelenskyy said U.S. partners would need to ensure Russia was genuinely prepared to stop the war “for real and for the long term” before Ukraine took its own de-escalatory steps.

He claimed Russia was feeling pressure from Ukrainian strikes on what he called its war economy. Zelenskyy also said Russia had shown no genuine desire to move toward ending the war.

Any discussion on ending the strikes should include energy, food routes and critical infrastructure, according to the post.

The post did not explain his reference to elections.

Zelenskyy’s Sept. 15 statement also praised a U.S. decision concerning Russia’s VTB Bank. The U.S. Treasury Department announced Sept. 14 that it had imposed Iran-related sanctions on the bank for operating in Iran’s financial sector.

Treasury accused VTB of participating in Iranian sanctions evasion, including by establishing relationships with sanctioned Iranian banks. The department also said VTB had created a settlement system using Iranian rials and Russian rubles to increase bilateral trade.

Zelenskyy described VTB as one of Russia’s systemic banks and alleged that it was heavily involved in schemes supporting Russia’s war and its relations with Iran. He called for dismantling such arrangements and thanked Ukraine’s partners for what he described as a useful step.

Zelenskyy said all forms of pressure on Russia should create conditions for diplomacy. He added that there was no alternative to ending the war.