Kyiv pushes back on Trump’s call for a new Ukrainian president as drones hit Russian data hub

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Only Russia is responsible for the war in Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday as he vowed to press ahead with strikes on Russian oil refineries, despite criticism from U.S. President Donald Trump, who blamed him for high diesel prices and said he should be replaced.

The exchange came as Kyiv pressed its campaign against infrastructure deep inside Russia, with a drone attack on Sunday shutting down a data center run by Russian technology giant Yandex, the third strike on the company’s facilities in four days. Russia and Ukraine are locked in a long-range aerial war while their armies remain largely deadlocked on the front line, more than 4 1/2 years since Moscow’s full-scale invasion.

“Ukraine will be ready to stop striking Russian oil refineries if Russia stops striking our energy infrastructure,” Zelenskyy wrote on X.

“It is possible to stop strikes on energy infrastructure as early as today, but (Russian President Vladimir) Putin does not want to do so,” he said, adding that any de-escalation must be reciprocal and backed by real guarantees.

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Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha pushed back on Trump’s comments, writing on X late Saturday that Zelenskyy was leading the country through a war for its independence. “He has the support of the Ukrainian people, and they have the right to decide. Statements from abroad only confirm that he is doing his job well,” Sybiha wrote.

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Trump said Saturday it was time for Ukraine to get a new president, suggesting Zelenskyy has not done enough to end the war and blaming him for high diesel prices in the U.S.

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“I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal because he could have made many deals and for some reason he never does,” Trump said.

The U.S. president, who on Friday struck a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin to buy diesel from Russia in an attempt to address high fuel prices ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, has been urging Zelenskyy for weeks to stop strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.

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He has sought to blame record U.S. diesel prices on Ukraine rather than the U.S.-led war in Iran, which has driven up world energy prices. Ukrainian and European officials reacted to the diesel deal with dismay, saying it will help pay for Russia’s war effort.

Ukraine strikes third data center in four days

The Ukrainian drone attack on the Yandex data center in the city of Vladimir, east of Moscow, caused outages across the company’s services, leaving users in dozens of Russian cities and in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia unable to order taxis or access banking services, according to Russian independent news outlet Astra.

“As a result of the drone attack, the infrastructure of Yandex’s data center in Vladimir was damaged. Operations at the data center have been completely halted. There were no injuries,” said the Yandex Cloud Telegram channel, which provides operational updates on service availability.

In Moscow, residents described disruption to everyday tasks. Pavel Belyavskiy, a driver for Yandex Taxi, said it was unclear whether orders were coming through at all, and that on several rides he had to cancel after waiting a long time because he could not reach the passenger.

“I’d press the ‘call’ button to contact them, but nothing happens,” he said, “There’s nothing I can do, so I’m just forced to cancel.”

Igor Mann said he went to check the status of an order on the Yandex Market shopping platform but the page was unavailable, and connecting through a VPN did not help. “Nothing worked,” he said.

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Another Moscow resident, Eduard Malyavko, said the outages had “direct impact” and weren’t just about “convenience.”

“It’s also about work,” he said, adding that they also affected “healthcare, and everything else.”

On Thursday, a drone attack took a Yandex data center offline in the Ryazan region, southeast of Moscow. A day later, Ukrainian drones hit the company’s major data center in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow, partly putting it out of action, Yandex said.

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 Russia’s artificial intelligence development.

Zaporizhzhia death toll rises to 23

Elsewhere, Zelenskyy said search and rescue operations ended in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia after a Russian bombing on Saturday, Ivan Fedorov, the former regional head and co-chair of the regional defense council, said Sunday.

Zelenskyy said 23 people were killed in the attack, including four children. More than 30 people were wounded, Fedorov said, eight of whom remain hospitalized.

A man was killed and two women wounded in a Ukrainian drone strike on Russia’s Bryansk border region, local officials said Sunday.