State Department stated on Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries
The United States' position on Ukraine's attacks against Russian oil refineries is not to encourage Ukrainian forces to strike outside their own borders.
This was stated by US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller at a press briefing on March 26.
The journalists asked the State Department spokesman to comment on recent press reports that the United States asked Ukraine to stop striking Russian oil refineries.
"I'm not going to talk about specific conversations, but our position from the very beginning of this war has always been that we do not encourage or support Ukraine's strikes outside of its own territory," Miller said.
Asked if these specific conversations were about attacks on Russian refineries, the spokesman again dodged a direct answer and said that the American position is well known to the Ukrainian government, so "it's not something they wouldn't know about".
As a reminder, in recent weeks, the Ukrainian Defense Forces have used drones to attack 12 Russian oil refineries.
The attacks resulted in the failure of at least 10% of the Russian oil refining industry's capacity. On March 1, Russia officially stopped exporting gasoline completely due to fuel shortages.
Recently, the Financial Times reported that the United States has allegedly called on Ukraine to stop attacks on Russian energy infrastructure. Washington fears that strikes on refineries could lead to an increase in world oil and gasoline prices.
Instead, Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said that Ukraine had not received any calls from the United States to stop the attacks on Russian refineries.
