Did the US pressure Ukraine over strikes on Russian oil refineries

Halyna, you mentioned that you have your own sources and your own colleagues, as it were, in American politics.

The Kyiv Independent recently wrote that representatives of the U.S. administration threatened Ukrainian senior— senior officials, including from the Ukrainian army and government officials, demanding that they not attack Russian oil refineries, with cutting off, uh,

intelligence sharing and even suspending the PUR program.

According to the Financial Times, this concerned Pavlo, Pavlo Palisa.

He is, uh, the deputy head of the President's Office.

And, in fact, they allegedly even called Drapatyi.

Did such pressure really take place? Is the—the cost of stopping strikes on oil refineries possibly the suspension of intelligence sharing and the suspension of the PUR arms supply program for Ukraine?

Uh, well, I, I think that, after all, for certain Only Drapatyi can confirm or deny this information or Palisa. But in my view, uh, actually, if such a decision were made, specifically regarding the PUR program, it would harm, first and foremost, uh, not even Ukraine, but America.

Why? Why? Uh, well, to explain why, we need to briefly explain what the PUR program is.

It's, uh, well, this kind of program, yeah, or an instrument under which the, uh, European Union can buy American weapons from American manufacturers and transfer them to Ukraine.

As a priority. As a priority. That is, first and foremost, we're talking about means for, uh, air— uh, air defense.

That is, in principle, we're not even talking about any kind of, well, active combat operations. This is protection, first and foremost, for Ukrainian citizens and Ukrainian infrastructure, including energy infrastructure.

But the first to suffer from this decision will be American arms manufacturers because they will effectively lose, well, this fairly large market.

Now, uh, actually Ukraine's consumption of ammunition, including for air defense, is the largest in the world. So, uh, such a decision by the American president, which will harm the American economy, and especially when we are talking about, well, the approach of elections, uh,

to Congress, well, frankly, it again causes surprise, misunderstanding, uh, and, well, I don't even know how to describe, uh, the full range of these emotions. But in diplomatic language, it is quite difficult to describe.

Therefore, well, on the other hand, there have actually already been such precedents for us. If I'm not mistaken, about a year or a year and a half ago, there was also a form of blackmail by the Trump administration over the suspension,

uh, of intelligence sharing, and even for half a day or a day, such intelligence sharing was, was suspended.

What does this mean for Ukraine? Uh, first and foremost, it means that we will not be able to see Russian ballistic missile launches.

For other— On aircraft. Huh? That is, we will not be able to receive an air raid alert in time about ballistic missile launches.

Specifically ballistic missiles, because ballistic missiles can only be seen by essentially American, uh, those, you know, satellite systems.

But, uh, we basically cooperate and also receive fairly well, quite good and prompt data, uh, from our European friends and partners. The only thing is that European satellites actually have limitations, they cannot see or transmit information about ballistic missiles as quickly.

So, returning once again to that, how to comment on this, well, we see yet another, in fact, another statement and another possible action, where President Trump shoots himself in the foot. And this is absolutely incomprehensible and absolutely,

well, simply impossible to either explain or approve on the eve of the elections in America.

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