'Only so much he could do'; Zelensky says Ukraine will resume strikes on Russia | Sunrise

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he plans to resume strikes on oil in Russian refineries, defying President Trump's demands to stop. It's the latest sign of growing tension between the United States and Ukraine as President Trump welcomes help from Russia in the form of diesel. Here to break down the latest developments is Andrei Dobryansky, policy expert at the Center for U.S.-Ukrainian Relations. Andrei, good morning. Good to see you, my friend. Good to see you too, Andrei. Andrei, let's start there at the beginning. President Zelensky told the Financial Times the energy ceasefire is over. Was it ever really in place, Andrei? Yeah, for Ukraine, three days of not hitting Russian energy points. And every single day, including the first 24 hours where President Trump announced that there was going to be a ceasefire, Russia hit six energy points that night and then continued on every day thereafter. So having Ukraine do everything that the United States asked for, still getting punished by the United States, even getting called daily. People throughout the Ukrainian government, from the top to the bottom, all getting calls from Americans at the White House saying, please stop, please stop, while they were not attacking Russia. And in the meantime, they're allowing Russia to have the deadliest phase of killing Ukrainian civilians that it's had since 2022. And that's all happened while Donald Trump has his so-called negotiations with the Russians. Andre, help us understand what is the deal because it seems as though uh president Zelenskyy's hands were literally tied no absolutely uh there was only so much you can do to you know try to honor the americans requests but three days of attacks including all these civilian attacks and i i hesitate to even put put that in the scope of a war these are terrorist attacks in in uh in the city of Sumy there was a nine-story building that was attacked Kyiv had the same there was a five-story building that had a drone slam into it in Kyiv this is all during the so-called ceasefire and then yesterday in the city of Uman where 50 000 pilgrimage uh worshippers came for Rosh Hashanah just three weeks ago we had a 10-story building that was attacked by a russian Shahed missile uh drone a Shahed drone developed in concert with their iranian partners anytime we're making a deal with the russians we're making a deal with the iranians and that's what's frustrating the ukrainians who are willing to help in the war against iran but here donald trump is willing to pay russia to give them more support to have iranians attack us well you mentioned iran but you know uh andre we heard the president blame Volodymyr Zelensky for the high gas prices saying that it's his attacks on the russian refineries that were causing the high fuel prices here in the united states uh the attacks on russian oil refineries are to pressure russia to come to the negotiation table which is what donald trump has wanted from the get-go. This has been a plan that was worked out between the United States and the Ukrainians. What are you going to hit? Where are you going to hit specifically the places that are going to put pressure to finally force President Putin to come to the table as Donald Trump wanted. And that's why Donald Trump told Ukraine last year, before he started the war in Iran, that he thought that Ukraine can drive out all the Russians from every single part of Ukrainian territory if they continue with this plan. I don't know why Donald Trump has changed his mind, but he often goes from offering Ukraine things to then having Zelensky come to the White House and he changes his mind. And then he's very on board with Ukraine, and then he's very much not on board with Ukraine. That's not what a reliable partner does. And I want to stress again, more civilians have been killed since Donald Trump began his so-called negotiations than in the very first weeks of the war. Andre, President Zelensky says that the United States threatened to withhold intelligence, which the U.S. has denied. Then on Wednesday, Ukraine lost connection to vital Starlink communications, which Zelensky blamed on the United States. What do you make of these claims, this back and forth? And then Elon Musk jumped in and said, wait a minute, I don't control what's actually happening here. Right. I think there's a lot of questions, and I think Congress has those questions. One of the big aftereffects of this midterm elections that we're going to have is that there's going to be a reshuffling of who's in Congress, not just say that there's going to be a majority by the Democrats, but even with all the resignations, we have a historic number of members of Congress not wanting to stay in Congress while President Trump is in office. so they've either decided not to run again or they've resigned altogether and that means there's going to be a lot of new faces and a lot of people with a lot of questions about what happened and guess who they want to ask questions of the largest political donor in the history of the United States, the one who controls Starlink, he's never been called up in front of Congress to answer for any of his federal contracts so I assume that exactly what happened just now with the Starlink shutdown you're going to see some congressional hearings and you're going to have on one side of the table, Pete Hegseth and the Defense Department on the other side, Elon Musk talking about Starlink and the United States people need to find out exactly what happened, not you know drive this under the rug like the last five times they stopped aid to Ukraine but get to the bottom of who's actually causing this aid to Ukraine a number of lawmakers are upset, in fact here's what Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska wrote on social media. He said here that the administration's decision to reduce intel sharing to Ukraine and access to Starlink equates to aiding the invader and the war criminal who bombs cities. Does the administration think it will get any support for the remainder of the 119th Congress? Their agenda is dead unless they change paths. Andre, let's turn to President Trump's decision to buy diesel from Russia. What was your reaction when you heard that? Oh, just confusion. What do you mean you're buying diesel from Russia? The Republican Congress in 2022 decided to ban that. They complained that President Biden was allowing sales of Russian oil still to the United States. Every sitting committee member that was Republican in 2022 put out social media statements, made speeches. We need to ban the purchase of Russian oil. And that's what President Biden signed into law in April of 2022. There is no purchase of Russian oil. It's not even something that you can do with the waiver, which is what Scott Bessent proposed that his office can put out. So none of this makes sense. And we still don't know why we're sending money to Russia if Russia is actively helping the Iranians target and kill American locations in the Middle East. This is all about helping the enemy. It's not about helping the U.S. the one partner that the U.S. has that's trying to help is Ukraine and Ukraine is constantly waiting for the support that America promised it like the 400 million dollars that Congress passed in December last year of military aid that still hasn't come we've heard it called you know by some lawmakers uh cutting off her nose to spite our face our President Zelensky spoke with Pierce Morgan about the relationship with the United States let's take a listen it's a pity that we are losing uh we are losing strong partner and this is our country our border so our whole our children and and this is very important for us that's why it's painful when President Trump chooses one side not not our side Andre those are just tough words to hear they say it doesn't feel like he's on our side Andre wrap this up for me have less than 30 seconds where do you think things go from here? Right now, a very bad situation in Ukraine. Nick, I'm going to be in Ukraine in less than a week I'm going to go to Kiev itself I'm going to feel what they do and that's what any person in the United States government should be doing right now. They should be standing alongside McDonald's, Nestle and all the American corporations that are having their facilities bombed out while Donald Trump does nothing and that's the important thing for us to remember. We can do something. we can raise our voices and say, save Oleshka, save the town that has 200 children and 2,000 residents that's being starved for three months But until the United States does that, Russia has a green light to go further. Andrei, I know that you will be busy while you're there but the team and I would love to stay in touch with you and possibly speak with you while you're in Ukraine. Andrei Dobryansky, policy expert at the Center for U.S.-Ukrainian Relations. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.