World News

My script blockers had a deuce of a time resolving that page. So to SYAC, here's the text. smh. Also, what is Ukrainian for, "mind your own business, you irrelevant slob." Asking for a friend.

JD Vance asked Ukraine to stop drone strikes on oil tankers at a critical Russian Black Sea port.

In a phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky, the US vice-president warned that the attacks at Novorossiysk were disrupting oil markets and threatening American business interests in the region.

Ukraine had been hitting tankers carrying Kazakh crude to a terminal operated by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC).

Chevron and ExxonMobil, two of the biggest US energy companies, hold stakes in the CPC and in the western Kazakh oilfields that supply it, with Chevron possessing some 50 per cent of Tengiz, Kazakhstan's largest field, and Exxon 25 per cent.

Since the phone call on July 31, there have been no further strikes on tankers near the CPC terminal.

Kyiv stepped up strikes on shipping and energy infrastructure last month in an effort to choke off the revenue funding Moscow's war machine. Its efforts knocked out as much as one fifth of CPC oil loadings in July.

After the request from Washington, Kyiv promised not to target CPC infrastructure or non-Russian ships, on the condition that the ships were not under sanctions and were not carrying Russian oil or cargo.

Kyiv complied because it hoped to procure a US licence to produce Patriot interceptor missiles from the White House amid critical shortages of the defensive weapon, a source said.

Donald Trump has said that Ukraine will be given the licence, but no agreement has been formally signed.

The CPC has been a "regular part of the conversation with the US and Kazakh governments", one senior Ukrainian official told the Financial Times, which revealed the phone call.

"The administration views the CPC as a vital conduit of Kazakhstan-origin energy for European markets that serves as an alternative to Russian energy supplies," a US official told the newspaper.

The White House has been protective of US business interests in Russia, issuing a démarche – a diplomatic note of protest – to Olha Stefanishyna, then Kyiv's ambassador to Washington, after a strike on the Novorossiysk port late last year.

Kyiv has continued to attack sites in the area. On Wednesday morning, the Novorossiysk grain terminal was forced to suspend operations after overnight drone strikes.

Andrei Kravchenko, the Novorossiysk mayor, said that two people had been injured and one child killed in the attacks.

In Ukraine, Russia's overnight attacks killed two people, including an elderly woman, in the port city of Kherson and badly damaged a shopping centre in the south-eastern city of Zaporizhzhia.

On Tuesday night, Mr Zelensky said Kyiv was pushing forward with efforts to bring an end to the four-and-a-half-year war in Ukraine and had handed concrete proposals to US negotiators in an effort to accelerate mediation with Moscow.

The Ukrainian president also renewed his appeal to Washington to help fortify the country against aerial attacks.

"America can help strengthen our defence, first and foremost through air defence, and put pressure on Russia so that its plans change – from prolonging the war to preparing to end it," he said.