Volodymyr Zelensky is seeking European support at a Brussels summit after Donald Trump criticised Ukraine’s renewed attacks on Russian oil refineries and described the Ukrainian president as harder to deal with than Vladimir Putin. The dispute is unfolding as both Russia and Ukraine report further overnight strikes.
European leaders are discussing funding and preparations to help Ukraine through winter, with energy infrastructure and defence high on the agenda. The immediate diplomatic problem is that the sides do not agree on the status of the energy ceasefire Trump announced last week.
Zelensky says Ukraine paused its attacks on energy targets for three days at Trump’s request but would resume them because Russian strikes continued. Moscow says it never agreed to the ceasefire. Those statements describe competing positions, not a mutually accepted agreement whose terms are clear to all participants.
A disputed pause
Trump told Newsmax on Thursday evening that he was not a fan of Zelensky and accused him of resisting a settlement. He also called renewed attacks on Russian refineries a disgrace, arguing that they pushed up world oil prices. These are the US president’s assessments, which Zelensky had not publicly answered in the latest BBC report.
Ukraine’s account is that it supported a pause but saw no corresponding restraint by Russia. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen backed that interpretation at the summit, saying Russia had not respected the proposed energy ceasefire and that sanctions should be increased rather than lifted.
Russia’s stated position is different: it says it did not sign up to the pause Trump announced. That distinction is important because a unilateral announcement is not necessarily evidence of an agreement between belligerents. Effective monitoring would also require clear terms on which targets were covered and when commitments began.
The disagreement has left diplomacy running alongside renewed military action rather than replacing it. A dispute about whether an undertaking existed is a different problem from a dispute about compliance with terms both sides recognise.
Strikes continue overnight
Kharkiv’s regional governor, Oleg Synegubov, reported several deaths and at least 19 injuries after a Russian drone attack on the north-eastern Ukrainian city. Those figures are attributed to the regional authorities and may change as emergency work continues.
Russia’s defence ministry said 644 Ukrainian drones were intercepted over 26 regions. Moscow’s mayor said 94 were shot down while approaching the capital, and airspace closures caused flight delays. These are Russian official claims about interceptions, not independently verified totals of every drone launched or every target hit.
The governor of the Vladimir region, east of Moscow, also reported intercepting drones to prevent an attack on heating infrastructure. Together, the accounts underline the continuing vulnerability of civilian infrastructure and transport while leaders debate a proposed pause on energy strikes.
The human consequences of those attacks are not interchangeable with the political arguments over refineries. Casualty reports, damage assessments and military claims require their own evidence, even when they are part of the same wider conflict.
Europe prepares for winter
Zelensky arrived at the summit alongside von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa. He said Ukraine wanted the war to end quickly but needed to prepare a winter package covering energy, defence and funding because it did not see signs that Russia wanted to end the fighting.
This will be the fifth winter since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. European leaders say they will continue supporting Ukraine’s energy and water infrastructure, but the summit agenda is not itself confirmation that a particular new funding package has been approved.
The tensions with Washington also involve fuel supplies and military communications. The BBC reports that a US deal to import 300,000 tonnes of Russian diesel angered Zelensky, while restrictions on the US-owned Starlink network this week deepened Ukrainian concerns about its ability to respond to attacks.
Trump’s administration has warned that intelligence sharing could be withheld if Ukraine continues hitting Russian refineries. A warning is not the same as confirmation that all intelligence assistance has stopped, and the distinction matters for understanding Ukraine’s position.
The summit’s immediate task is to turn expressions of support into concrete preparation for winter. The wider diplomatic challenge remains unresolved: securing a halt to attacks requires terms accepted by the parties, not only an announcement from Washington followed by contradictory accounts of what was agreed.
