FILE PHOTO: Smoke billows from Yandex's Sasovo hub, one of the company's five large data centres, after a fire following a drone strike forced the suspension of operations at the site, which hosts tens of thousands of servers, Sasovo, Russia, in this screengrab obtained from a social media video on Otober 8, 2026. SOCIAL MEDIA/via REUTERS. THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES. Verification lines: Petrol station, data centre building and road layout matched satellite and archive imagery Coordinates: 54.3729250068205, 41.934405711751126 Date verified by statement from Yandex saying that drones hit one of its major data centers in Russia's Ryazan region on October 8 NASA FIRMS detected thermal activity at the location on October 8, where there is not typically./File Photo

Russia talks up refinery attack as Trump blames Ukraine for expensive fuel

· The Straits Times

MOSCOW, Oct 16 - Russia has publicly acknowledged a Ukrainian drone strike on a major oil refinery this week and broadcast images on state media, breaking with its usual practice in order to highlight an attack that US President Donald Trump has branded a "disgrace".

Ukraine has frequently struck Russian oil refineries in attacks that officials typically describe as hits on "industrial enterprises".

But the target of Thursday's attack in Ryazan was immediately identified by the regional governor as the refinery, one of Russia's largest. For the first time since the start of the war, state TV showed the aftermath of a refinery attack.

In a brief report, the Rossiya-24 channel showed the Ryazan plant, southeast of Moscow, with a relatively small plume of black smoke rising from the site. No fire was visible.

Russia is keen to play up the incident, which took place four days after Trump announced an energy ceasefire between Moscow and Kyiv that neither side confirmed.

Ukraine says it paused such attacks for three days in deference to Trump but resumed them because Russia was continuing to pound its thermal power plants and other energy infrastructure.

Trump is under pressure to lower fuel prices, with his Republicans facing midterm elections in less than three weeks. Prices for diesel have reached record highs since he launched a war against Iran in February, though Trump says it is the Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries that are driving up global prices.

Trump said at the weekend that such attacks by Kyiv had "damn well better stop". In an interview broadcast on Thursday, he said Ukraine's resumption of strikes was a "disgrace".

Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced last week a deal on Russian diesel exports to US and global markets in order to bring down prices.

Ukraine and its allies are concerned that Trump, who has tried without success to end the 4-1/2-year war, is swinging back towards favouring Moscow, plunging relations with Zelenskiy to their lowest point since he berated the Ukrainian leader in the Oval Office in February 2025. He said at the weekend that Ukraine needed a new president.

Putin said on Thursday that recent Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries had not caused significant damage and vowed that Moscow would respond. REUTERS