Trump is playing into the Kremlin’s hands

On Saturday, U.S. President Donald Trump stated that, in his view, the time had come for Ukraine to have a new president. Speaking to journalists at the White House, he claimed that Volodymyr Zelensky could have ended the war with Russia “many, many times” but had failed to do so, and that the Ukrainians should choose someone capable of striking a deal. He also called once again on Zelensky to stop attacking Russian oil refineries, because, in his view, those attacks are driving up the price of diesel worldwide and in the United States.

Trump’s statements came the day after an agreement between the United States and Russia on diesel, which Zelensky had described as “neither fair nor honest”. On Friday, following a telephone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump announced that Russia would release more than 300,000 tonnes of diesel onto the world market immediately, a further 500,000 tonnes in November, then one million tonnes and finally a further three million tonnes, at unspecified dates. To make the agreement possible, the US Treasury Department has suspended, until 7 April, the sanctions prohibiting the purchase and transport of Russian diesel. This is the first time since the start of the war that such an exemption has lasted more than 30 days, and it comes a month after Trump signed a law strengthening sanctions against the Russian energy sector.

To understand why the agreement concerns Ukraine, we need to start with the refineries. For months, the Ukrainian army has been using drones to attack refineries, oil depots and terminals in Russia – even those thousands of kilometres from the front line – in order to reduce the revenue the Russian government uses to fund the war. The attacks have had a significant impact: according to the International Energy Agency, diesel production in Russia has fallen by around 30 per cent, and in July the Russian government banned diesel exports to ensure fuel supplies for the domestic market. As a result, the Russian diesel that previously ended up on international markets has now run out.

This came at a time when the fuel market was already under pressure due to the conflict between the United States and Iran, which had made it difficult to export oil from the Persian Gulf. In the United States, diesel reached a record price of $6.52 per gallon in September. Diesel is the fuel used by lorries and agricultural machinery, and its price drives up the cost of many goods. With less than four weeks remaining before the mid-term elections, a poll by the AP and the NORC research centre indicates that a majority of Americans disapprove of the handling of the war in Iran and hold Trump responsible for the high prices. Trump, however, attributes the problem primarily to Ukrainian attacks: on Saturday he said that Zelensky was ‘causing problems’ for American farmers and ranchers.

According to several analysts, the agreement will have a limited impact on prices. The United States consumes around 3.7 million barrels of diesel a day, and the quantities announced are small by comparison. It is not even clear whether Russia will be able to export them: Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski pointed out that there is a fuel shortage in Russia, even in Moscow, and wondered where the quantities to be sold abroad would come from.

The agreement was announced whilst a meeting on negotiations to end the war was taking place in Miami. Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, were in talks with a Ukrainian delegation and diplomats from Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the European Union and NATO. According to the news website Axios, discussions centred primarily on the security guarantees to be given to Ukraine following a potential peace agreement, but also covered territorial issues, reconstruction and Ukraine’s future accession to the European Union. During the meeting, Witkoff and Kushner informed the other participants that Trump was about to speak to Putin and lift the sanctions on diesel. Several Ukrainian officials told the Kyiv Independent newspaper that they had not been informed beforehand, and one of them said the announcement seemed “like a trap”. Zelensky said his delegation had been used “as a cover”.

During the meeting, the United States is also said to have threatened to stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine. According to the Financial Times, senior White House officials told their Ukrainian counterparts that the sharing of intelligence would be suspended if the attacks on refineries continued. A person present in Miami told the Kyiv Independent the same thing, and Axios reported a similar allegation from a Ukrainian official. A U.S. official denied that any threat had been made, stating that Witkoff and Kushner had merely pointed out that the United States supplies Ukraine with ammunition and intelligence, and that Ukraine should therefore refrain from actions that harm American consumers. U.S. intelligence is vital for Ukraine, as it helps the country identify and strike targets deep within Russian territory, including oil refineries. The U.S. had already suspended this support for around a week in March 2025, following the row between Trump and Zelensky at the White House. In Ukraine, MPs from both the ruling coalition and the opposition protested, arguing that this would constitute a violation of the country’s sovereignty.

The Ukrainian government is not opposed to halting attacks on refineries, but is calling on Russia to do the same with regard to attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure. For months, Russia has been bombing power stations and electricity grids in Ukraine, leaving millions of people without power every day, and is doing so with increasing intensity as winter approaches. Zelensky reiterated on Friday that Ukraine will stop targeting Russian refineries if Russia stops targeting Ukrainian energy infrastructure. The United States, however, is calling on Ukraine to cease its attacks unconditionally: a US official explained to Axios that Trump does not consider the two types of attack to be equivalent. On Friday and Saturday, Russia continued to bomb Ukraine: in Zaporizhzhia, at least 20 people, including three children, were killed by bombs dropped on residential blocks, whilst Kyiv was hit by drones and missiles.

With this agreement, Russia has secured something it had been demanding for some time. In recent weeks, Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev had told Witkoff and Kushner that Russia wanted sanctions to be eased as a condition for discussing a truce on attacks on energy infrastructure. The easing of sanctions has come, but the truce has not. Following the phone call with Trump, Putin’s adviser Yuri Ushakov said that Russia is not, for the time being, committing to resuming negotiations with Ukraine. Dmitriev described Trump’s remarks about Zelensky as ‘historic’.

The call for a new president revives an argument long used by the Russian government: that Zelensky is no longer legitimate because his term of office, which began in 2019, has expired. No elections have been held in Ukraine because the law prohibits voting whilst martial law is in force, which was introduced following the Russian invasion of 2022. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha responded that Zelenskyy has the support of the Ukrainian people and that it is up to them to decide.

In the United States, too, the agreement has been criticised, both by Democrats and by some Republicans. Republican MP Michael McCaul said he feared that lifting sanctions would fund the Russian war. Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, one of the authors of the sanctions bill signed by Trump in September, said that the agreement serves to conceal the damage caused by the war in Iran.

European governments have said they will continue to apply the sanctions. The US exemption does not alter the European Union’s rules, which from 2023 will ban the import by sea of Russian diesel and other petroleum products. The German government has said it is working on new sanctions alongside other European countries, and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson noted that on Monday the European Union is expected to approve its most comprehensive sanctions package to date, targeting 1,600 individuals and companies linked to the Russian military industry. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron telephoned Zelensky to express their support.

For Russia, European sanctions carry more weight than American ones: before the war, Europe purchased around half of the oil and petroleum products exported by Russia, and a large proportion of the Russian central bank’s assets that have been frozen are held in Europe. In the coming weeks, it will become clear whether the United States will also ask European countries to ease sanctions, and whether Witkoff and Kushner will still travel to Moscow and Kyiv as they had planned before the negotiations broke down.