US media: Ukraine bombed more than a dozen Russian refineries, US Secretary of Defense issued a public warning
2024-08-25
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According to a report by Bloomberg on April 10, US Secretary of Defense Austin warned that Ukraine's recent attack on Russian refineries could affect the global energy market and urged Ukraine to focus its attacks on military targets.
As the situation on the Ukrainian battlefield has deteriorated in recent weeks, Ukraine has increasingly turned to launching attacks deep into Russian territory, including attacks on infrastructure, with the aim of hampering the Russian military's access to fuel and reducing Russia's oil export revenues, the report said.
US Secretary of Defense Austin Source: Visual China
On April 9 local time, Austin told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, "These attacks could have a chain reaction on the global energy situation... It is more advantageous for Ukraine to target tactical and operational targets that can directly affect the current war situation."
The report pointed out that the United States has been trying to strike a balance between reducing Russia's oil export revenue and maintaining global energy market supply, as well as curbing inflation and allowing the global economy to "soft land." As global crude oil prices have risen to their highest level in nearly six months recently, concerns are growing.
According to Bloomberg, Austin's warning was immediately refuted by Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who accused the Biden administration of preventing Ukraine from taking effective action for political reasons. "In my opinion, the Biden administration does not want gasoline prices to rise in an election year," Cotton said. The report said that President Biden has been dealing with high inflation rates in the United States for most of his term, including high gasoline prices.
The report also quoted Giorgi Revishvili, a former senior adviser to the Georgian National Security Council, as saying that Ukraine has attacked more than a dozen Russian refineries since early January, including some of the country's largest refineries. He mentioned that Ukraine launched one of the farthest drone attacks since the Russian-Ukrainian conflict on April 2, targeting a refinery in the Russian Republic of Tatarstan, about 1,300 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.
According to the RT website, Austin's remarks further confirm reports that the United States has asked Ukraine to stop attacking Russian refineries. Earlier on March 22, the Financial Times quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that the United States is urging Ukraine to stop attacking Russian energy infrastructure and warned that drone attacks could push up global oil prices and trigger retaliatory actions from Russia.
RT pointed out that there is no sign that Ukraine is willing to listen to the United States on this issue. Earlier this week, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry's General Intelligence Directorate (GRU) said that it would expand its attacks on Russian refineries. After the Financial Times published the above report, Podoljak, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidential office, said that the so-called news that the United States asked Ukraine to stop attacking Russian refineries was false, and that Ukraine would continue its attacks.
According to Russia's TASS news agency, Kremlin spokesman and Russian presidential press secretary Peskov previously stated that Russia hopes that the United States will not only call on Kiev to stop attacking Russian energy facilities, but also avoid engaging in "terrorist activities", the first of which is to stop attacking residential buildings.
