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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Morton reported from London.

A Yandex food delivery courier rides his scooter in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters as he arrives on Air Force One, Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to the media after a German-Ukrainian business forum in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Dan Bashakov)

Rescue workers clear the rubble of a residential building destroyed by a Russian airstrike in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Kateryna Klochko)

Rescue workers pull a family from the rubble of a residential building destroyed by a Russian airstrike in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Kateryna Klochko)

FILE - Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, examines the current prototype of an unmanned vehicle during his visits Russia's largest internet search engine Yandex headquarters in Moscow, Russia, on Sept. 21, 2017. (Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

CAIRO (AP) — Saudi Arabia on Sunday kept its main international airport closed and moved Riyadh schools online as Yemen's Houthi rebels threatened new airstrikes across the kingdom, a day after a missile attack killed 12 people and wounded more than 300.

Saturday’s strike on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh marked a major escalation in the war between Yemen’s Iran’s-backed Houthis and the kingdom and further complicated sputtering efforts to halt the U.S.-Iran war. U.S. President Donald Trump said he was considering whether to join Saudi strikes against the rebels, a scenario that could prompt the Houthis to halt shipping through a crucial waterway and further restrict the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf.

The Houthis reported Sunday that two airstrikes hit Yemen's capital, Sanaa, blaming Saudi Arabia. There was no immediate comment from Saudi authorities or reports of casualties.

The Houthi-run Health Ministry says 91 Yemenis have been killed and 168 injured by the Saudi-led coalition in five weeks. It said that 60% of those killed were women and children.

Saudi authorities said Sunday that schools in the capital would be online until the end of the week. Meanwhile, the kingdom extended an ongoing airport closure until at least 9 p.m. Sunday, according to Flightradar24.

While the Houthis did not immediately claim responsibility for Saturday's attack, they have acknowledged targeting Saudi airports and oil installations and threatened new attacks on the kingdom's airports.

Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, the group's military spokesman, urged “everyone to take our warnings seriously."

The latest attack on the Saudi airport drew condemnations from Arab countries, including Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, as well as U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

“Attacks by Iran’s proxies are pushing the region into a spiral of violence," Von der Leyen wrote Sunday on X. “They are destabilizing crucial global transport and energy nodes."

The attack struck an airport complex housing terminals 3 and 4 for domestic flights, a regional official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.

The Saudi statement said the dead included four Saudi citizens, two Bangladeshi nationals, a Palestinian, a U.S. citizen, an Egyptian, a Jordanian, a Syrian and a Sudanese. It said several hospitals were treating the injured.

The Egyptian woman was a flight attendant identified as Azza Ramzy, 28, who worked for the Saudi airline Flynas, according to the Egyptian state-run Al-Qahera New television.

The attack is expected to increase Saudi pressure on allies, including the United States, to provide military support for the kingdom.

Shortly after the attack, Trump said he was evaluating whether the U.S. should join Saudi strikes against the rebels. “We’re going to look at it,” he said. “We just found out about the recent attack. So we’ll make a decision. We move very quickly.”

Trump said later Saturday he planned to speak with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Asked if the U.S. might get involved, Trump responded, “We’ll find out.”

A U.S. attack would deepen American involvement in an unpopular regional war that has threatened Trump's Republican party in upcoming American midterm elections. Both Trump and Iran insist the American election calendar has no effect on their decisions on how to end the seven-month-old conflict.

The Houthis claimed attacks earlier in the week on King Khalid International Airport that killed three Saudis, including a pilot. The airport has no military facilities.

The surge in attacks, including against other Saudi airports, military facilities and oil infrastructure, has come in the week since a Saudi-led coalition launched a major military offensive against the Houthis.

The latest fighting between Saudi Arabia and Houthi comes as negotiations between Iran and the U.S. aimed at ending their war appear to be at a standstill.

Until recently, the Houthis had been largely on the sidelines of the Iran war. Now, the rebels are helping Iran to pressure a key U.S. ally. Houthi attacks, along with their control of the Bab el-Mandeb waterway, also threaten to add new disruptions to the flow of oil from the region.

The Saudis and the Houthis began fighting in 2015 when the kingdom entered Yemen’s civil war on behalf of the internationally recognized government.

Relative calm after a 2022 ceasefire ended in July when the Houthis resumed attacks, saying the Saudis fired on the Sanaa airport as a plane from Iran was trying to land. That revived anger over the Saudi-led blockade that has largely isolated Houthi-run areas.

Now fighting has escalated, with the Saudi-led coalition providing air support for Yemeni government forces attempting to reverse recent Houthi gains along the Red Sea. Those gains gave the rebels better surveillance of shipping on the Bab el-Mandeb, a corridor that is a crucial alternative to the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has been attacking ships.

Saudi Arabia is running low on missile interceptors and has asked France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt to deploy air defense support to the region, regional officials told The Associated Press last month, with one noting that the U.S. has seen its own stock dwindle during the war with Iran.

But Ahmed Nagi, the International Crisis Group's senior analyst for Yemen, said the Houthi pressure tactics could backfire. “Rather than pushing Riyadh to step back, attacks on critical Saudi infrastructure could make the Saudis more determined to continue the campaign,” he said.

This report has been corrected to show that the Egyptian killed in the strike was a woman, not a man.

Associated Press writers Victoria Eastwood in Cairo, Collin Binkley in Washington and Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut contributed to this report.

People gather outside a metro station on the road to King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026. (AP Photo)

People gather outside a metro station on the road to King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026. (AP Photo)

This image from video obtained and verified by AP shows thick black smoke and flames rising from a fire at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)