Hours After US Grants Moscow Waiver For Selling Oil, Ukraine Targets 2 Russian Refineries

Ukraine attacked two Russian refineries and several other key oil targets, just hours after the US granted Moscow another waiver on the sale of its sanctioned oil.

CNN quoted Kyiv’s ‌drone forces commander Robert “Madyar” Brovdi saying on Telegram that Ukraine had struck the Novokuybyshevsk and Syzran oil refineries in Russia’s Samara region, the Tikhoretsk oil terminal in the Krasnodar region, and the Baltic Sea port of Vysotsk, as well as an oil depot in Sevastopol, in occupied Crimea.

Though the Russian Ministry of Defense did not mention the strikes, it said that its defenses intercepted 258 Ukrainian drones overnight.

Meanwhile, Russian regional authorities reported the attacks.

CNN quoted Vyacheslav Fedorishchev, the governor of the Samara

region, saying that “strikes have been recorded” against what he called “industrial facilities” and that emergency services were on the scene.

The US has extended a sanctions waiver allowing countries, including India, to continue purchasing Russian crude, barely two days after signalling that such relief would not be renewed.

The US Treasury issued a fresh general license permitting the purchase of Russian crude oil and petroleum products loaded onto vessels on or before April 17. These transactions will be allowed to continue until May 16, effectively extending the earlier waiver by nearly a month.

This was in contrast with clear indications earlier in the week that no extension was forthcoming. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had said at a White House briefing, “We will not be renewing the general license on Russian oil and we will not be renewing the general license on Iranian oil. That was oil that was on the water prior to March 11. So all that has been used.”