Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attends a joint news conference with U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner in front of the Mariinskyi Palace following the negotiations in Kyiv, Ukraine, September 6, 2026.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday that only Russia was responsible for the war in his country. He said Ukraine would stop its strikes against Russian oil refineries if Moscow stopped attacking Ukraine’s energy network, after US President Donald Trump blamed it for high diesel prices and said it was time for Ukraine to get a new leader.
The exchange comes as kyiv continues its campaign against infrastructure deep within Russia, with a drone attack on Sunday shutting down a data center run by Russian tech giant Yandex, the third strike against the company’s facilities in four days. Russia and Ukraine are engaged in a long-range air war while their armies remain largely stuck on the front lines, more than four and a half years after Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
“Ukraine will be ready to stop hitting Russian oil refineries if Russia stops hitting our energy infrastructure,” Zelensky wrote on X.
“It is possible to stop strikes on energy infrastructure today, but Putin does not want to do it,” he said, adding that any de-escalation must be reciprocal and backed by real guarantees.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha rejected Trump’s comments, writing Saturday evening that Zelensky was leading the country in a war for its independence. “He has the support of the Ukrainian people and they have the right to decide. The foreigner’s statements only confirm that he is doing his job well,” Sybiha wrote.
Trump said Saturday it was time for Ukraine to find a new president, suggesting Zelensky did not do enough to end the war and blaming him for high U.S. diesel prices.
“I suggest they pick a new leader who can make a deal, because he could have made a lot of deals and for some reason he never does,” Trump said.
The US president, who reached a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday to buy diesel from Russia to address high fuel prices ahead of US midterm elections, has urged Zelenskyy for weeks to stop strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.
He sought to blame record U.S. diesel prices on Ukraine rather than the U.S.-led war in Iran, which has driven up global energy prices. Ukrainian and European officials reacted with dismay to the diesel deal, saying it would help fund Russia’s war effort.
Ukraine hits third data center in four days
A Ukrainian drone attack has caused the shutdown of a data center run by Russian technology giant Yandex, the company announced on Sunday. This is the third strike against its facilities in four days as kyiv expands its campaign against infrastructure deep inside Russia.
The attack on the data center in the city of Vladimir, east of Moscow, caused outages in Yandex services, leaving users in dozens of Russian cities as well as in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia unable to order a taxi or access banking services, according to independent Russian media outlet Astra.
Russia and Ukraine are engaged in a long-range air war while their armies remain largely stuck on the front lines, more than four and a half years after Moscow’s full-scale invasion. The Ukrainian strikes on data centers follow Russian attacks on data centers in Ukraine.
“As a result of the drone attack, the infrastructure of the Yandex data center in Vladimir was damaged. Data center operations were completely disrupted. There were no injuries,” said the Yandex Cloud Telegram channel, which provides operational updates on the availability of the service.
On Thursday, a drone attack knocked a Yandex data center offline in the Ryazan region, southeast of Moscow. A day later, Ukrainian drones struck the company’s main data center in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow, and Yandex said the attack partially knocked it offline.
Yandex, often described as Russia’s Google, runs the country’s most popular search engine and a wide range of digital services, and is heavily involved in the development of artificial intelligence in Russia.
Zaporizhzhia: death toll rises to 23
Separately, Zelensky said search and rescue operations had ended in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia after a Russian bombardment on Saturday, Ivan Fedorov, a former regional head and co-chairman of the regional defense council, said on Sunday.
Zelensky said 23 people were killed in the attack, including four children. More than 30 people were injured, Fedorov said, eight of whom are still hospitalized.
A man was killed and two women injured in a Ukrainian drone strike in the Russian border region of Bryansk, local officials said Sunday.
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