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Ukraine halted an intensive campaign of drone strikes against oil tankers at Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk after US Vice President JD Vance personally asked President Volodymyr Zelensky to stop, the Financial Times reported Wednesday, citing Ukrainian and American officials.
Vance made the request during a July 31 phone call with Zelensky. Washington’s concern was that Ukraine’s strikes were destabilizing global oil markets and causing direct financial harm to major US companies — specifically Chevron and ExxonMobil, which hold significant stakes in Kazakhstan’s Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC), the main export route for Kazakh crude that flows through the Novorossiysk terminal.
The scale of the damage was significant. Ukrainian drone strikes took out as much as a fifth of CPC oil loadings during July alone, according to four sources familiar with the data cited by Reuters. Kazakhstan, which relies on the CPC route for the bulk of its crude exports, saw oil production drop 14 percent in July compared to June as a direct result of the attacks.
Ukraine agreed to halt strikes on non-Russian vessels — specifically those not under Ukrainian sanctions and not carrying Russian oil or cargo — as well as CPC infrastructure itself. A US official confirmed to the Financial Times that the administration had warned Kyiv to stop attacking non-Russian vessels in the Black Sea.
The episode illustrates the degree to which Washington’s support for Ukraine remains conditioned on protecting American commercial and energy interests — even when Ukraine’s military operations directly target infrastructure linked to Russia’s war economy. The CPC pipeline runs through Russian territory, meaning Kyiv had been using the strikes as economic leverage. Washington intervened not on strategic grounds but to protect Chevron and Exxon’s bottom line.
The White House, State Department, and Vance’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Sources: Financial Times, Reuters
