Μake us preferred on Google Ukraine launched an “unprecedented attack,” using drones, missiles, and unmanned sea vehicles, against the Novorossiysk naval base overnight Tuesday into Wednesday, Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed.
The Ukrainian president said strikes had been confirmed on air-defense positions, piers, and port infrastructure, calling the Russian port “the last major stronghold of Russia’s Black Sea Navy.”
Russian authorities, who work daily to paint Kyiv as the “villain” in a war Russia itself started, claimed three people died in the strikes, including a child, that Novorossiysk’s water supply was cut, that several educational facilities were damaged, and that two major grain terminals were forced to halt operations.
During the strike on Novorossiysk, though, Ukraine hit neither the terminal of the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), an oil pipeline linked to Kazakhstan’s oil fields, nor any tanker loading or preparing to load oil from it. Per the Financial Times, Ukraine called off those particular strikes after US Vice President JD Vance personally asked Zelensky to.
The call in question
The call reportedly took place on July 31. Per the Financial Times, Washington was worried Kyiv was further destabilizing oil markets while also hitting American companies. Kazakh oil has taken on outsized importance for global markets, since Middle East supplies remain constrained by the war with Iran.
US energy giants Chevron and ExxonMobil both hold stakes in the CPC as well as in the western Kazakh oil fields that feed it. Chevron owns 50% of Tengiz, the country’s largest field, while Exxon holds 25%.
A US official confirmed Washington warned Ukraine to stop targeting non-Russian ships in the Black Sea, as well as CPC infrastructure. “The administration views the CPC as a vital pipeline for moving energy from Kazakhstan to European markets, one that offers an alternative to Russian energy supplies,” the official said. Ukrainian officials, for their part, said Kyiv agreed not to target CPC infrastructure or non-Russian-flagged vessels, as long as those aren’t under Ukrainian sanctions and aren’t carrying Russian oil or other Russian cargo.
“We listen very closely to our American partners,” a senior Ukrainian official said, adding that Kyiv built the relevant “mechanisms” in response to the US request. The CPC “has consistently been part of the talks with the US and Kazakh governments,” the official added.
A person familiar with Ukraine’s position told the Financial Times that Kyiv agreed to the Trump administration’s request because it’s seeking US authorization to produce American Patriot missiles domestically. Kyiv also hopes to buy several hundred of them before winter, when Russia is expected to intensify strikes on critical Ukrainian infrastructure.
The American official who delivered the request to Zelensky, JD Vance, was the same figure at the center of Zelensky’s public dressing-down during his first Oval Office meeting with Donald Trump in February 2025. More recently, Vance said cutting off military aid to Kyiv was “one of the things we did as an administration that I’m most proud of.”
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s air force keeps publishing daily figures on how many drones Russia launches and how many get intercepted or shot down, but has repeatedly avoided giving figures on intercepted or downed missiles lately, apparently to avoid tipping off Russia to a shortage of interceptor missiles.
