Washington fears rising oil prices and extra retaliation from Moscow.
The U.S. is concerned that targeting Russia’s energy facilities will impact the Kremlin’s oil production capacity and drive up global prices — ahead of a knife-edge presidential election where prices at the gas pump are bound to be a contentious topic.
The sources also fear that these repeated strikes will provoke Russia into retaliating and targeting energy infrastructure the West relies on, including oil pipelines.
According to Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration Olha Stefanishyna, Ukrainian officials have said that oil refineries are “absolutely legitimate targets from a military point of view.”
I was thinking the same thing. Climate change won't make them take action on fossil fuels, but fuck around with politics and now they have a "legitimate" reason to do something.
"You treat them like animals, that's exactly how they'll behave."
This fits aptly here in my opinion. If you want Ukraine to play by your rules, you have to givethem the tools to do so. Otherwise they will do whatever they can to keep up the pressure without your support and without your rules.
Only reason I can think for Ukraine to listen is to not end up with the US run by a pro Russian asset, and even then that's just, "Wait til after the election"
And even that isn't a good reason since Russia should be getting flat out blockaded, so their oil shouldn't even BE in the calculation
Bloody bigots (if true).
This is a desperate measure by Ukraine, from which the UAF actually refrained as long as the US supported them!
Now they don't and they don't.
So give them the means for a meaningful defense (and offensive) on their own land, and they won't have to resort to strategic bombing. (Or droning, or cruise-missiling, or whatever it's called.)
I know these are different parts of the government, but still.
Well it's not nonsense. If Ukraine does something that helps Trump get elected everyone's fucked. He'll immediate stop supplying Ukraine and start sucking Putin off.
The US isn't saying we'll punish you if you keep doing this, they're just warning them that this can have undesired effects.
Personally, I think we should all accept some pain and just do a full trade embargo on Russia and Israel until they put their military back in their countries where they belong.