When Vice President Harris met privately with Volodymyr Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference in February, she told the Ukrainian leader something he didn’t want to hear: Refrain from attacking Russian oil refineries, a tactic U.S. officials believed would raise global energy prices and invite more aggressive Russian retaliation inside Ukraine.
The request, according to officials familiar with the matter, irritated Zelensky and his top aides, who view Kyiv’s string of drone strikes on Russian energy facilities as a rare bright spot in a grinding war with a bigger and better equipped foe.
Zelensky brushed off the recommendation, uncertain whether it reflected the consensus position of the Biden administration, these people said. But in subsequent weeks, Washington reinforced the warning in multiple conversations with Kyiv, including by national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who traveled to Ukraine’s capital in March, and other senior U.S. defense and intelligence officials.
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