A Ukrainian attack on a Russian port city triggered a reprimand from the United States, according to Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States. “We have heard from the Department of State that we should refrain from attacking U.S. interests,” Olha Stefanishyna said in a press briefing on Tuesday.
She said the warning occurred “after our attack on Novorossiysk because it affected American [and] Kazakh economic interest.”
A Ukrainian attack on a Russian port city triggered a reprimand from the United States, according to Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States. “We have heard from the Department of State that we should refrain from attacking U.S. interests,” Olha Stefanishyna said in a press briefing on Tuesday.
She said the warning occurred “after our attack on Novorossiysk because it affected American [and] Kazakh economic interest.”
Stefanishyna called the warning a demarche, or a formal U.S. State Department communique. Another Ukrainian official, who spoke on background to discuss a sensitive issue, later said that it was not an official demarche but a phone call regarding the attack. The State Department did not immediately return Foreign Policy’s request for comment.
Last November, Ukraine struck infrastructure used by the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) at Russia’s Novorossiysk port. The CPC is owned by major Russian and Kazakh energy companies, as well as three U.S. stakeholders: Mobil, Shell, and Chevron. It is the main method by which landlocked Kazakhstan exports oil, a commodity that accounts for around 40 percent of the nation’s export revenue. None of the three U.S. companies have responded to a request for comment.
That strike triggered a response from Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, who called the attack “outrageous.” In January, Ukraine struck two oil tankers near the CPC’s loading terminal that were waiting to take oil on board, Bloomberg previously reported.
Stefanishyna did not specify if the State Department reprimand was prompted by the November or January attack.
Ukraine’s attacks are part of a long-standing campaign to use drones to damage Russia’s energy industry, which is a key source of funding for Russia’s state budget. The campaign has led to fuel shortages across Russia and deprived the country of as much as 1.2 million barrels of oil a day. The United States has reportedly been involved in planning the attacks by providing Ukraine with intelligence. However, it is unclear whether the United States was involved in the CPC strikes.
The U.S. prohibition on attacks against U.S.-linked businesses is unlikely to significantly affect this campaign, said Eamon Drumm, a research fellow at the German Marshall Fund.
“A lot of the infrastructure where there would have been U.S. business before has been de-Americanized,” Drumm said. Many U.S. oil companies divested from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
However, continued attacks on CPC infrastructure could harm Western and Kazakh companies, as well as raise global oil prices, according to Sergey Vakulenko, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “Another stoppage to the CPC would play into the Kremlin’s hands. It would make India, China, and Türkiye more willing to buy Russian oil (at less of a discount), and would send global oil prices higher, increasing the incentives for countries to evade Western sanctions,” he wrote.
Russia has attacked U.S. business interests in Ukraine on multiple occasions, including attacks on agricultural facilities, manufacturing, and food production. U.S. President Donald Trump said that he spoke about one of the attacks directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin and told him he “was not happy.” This month, Democratic senators made Russian attacks on U.S. businesses a focus of their visit to Odesa, a port city from which Ukraine exports grain.
