Trump's Weekend on Moscow's Side: Putin's Diesel for America's Gas Pumps, a New President for Kyiv

In Zaporizhzhia on Saturday, rescue workers pulled 20 dead bodies from a shattered apartment building, three of them children, while another 18 lay injured in the rubble. A man sat on the wreckage talking on his phone, as if this were simply the new order of things. That same Saturday, Donald Trump stepped up to the microphones in Washington and declared that the problem was the man living under those bombs. Ukraine should find itself "a new president." The day before, he had bought Putin's diesel. The man under attack gets the blame, the man who started the fire gets a market.

The two moves belong together. On Friday, Trump announced the deal: Russia would supply diesel to the United States and world markets, and Washington lifted sanctions on Russian diesel exports through April. First more than 300,000 tons, another 500,000 in November. Then a million, soon followed by another three million. The Kremlin gave up nothing in return. After a phone call, Putin merely confirmed his "willingness" to supply the fuel, without giving a single figure. As late as Friday evening, his foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov said they would first have to "think about" when talks would even resume. Just over a month after the law meant to dry up Putin's oil money, Trump is turning the tap back on. He's now using the very tool that was supposed to choke off Russia's oil revenues to increase them.

On Saturday, before leaving for a rally in Tennessee, he dumped the blame on the man who bears the least responsibility. Zelenskyy could have ended the war "many times" but didn't want to, he claimed, and was causing "problems for the world," for "our farmers and ranchers," because Russia supplies a large share of the world's diesel. He said he'd been told Zelenskyy could do whatever he wanted with Russia, but he should leave the refineries alone. "He should damn well stop." And then came the sentence no American president has ever said about an ally at war: "I suggest they get themselves a new leader who can make a deal."

On top of that, he piled up figures nobody has substantiated. Had he been president in 2022, the war would never have broken out, he claimed, and it had started "because of incompetence." Zelenskyy had lost "30 percent" of his country and was responsible for more than two million deaths. Independent estimates put around 20 percent of Ukrainian territory under Russian control, British military officials speak of roughly half a million Russian soldiers killed, and no reliable figure exists for Ukrainian deaths. Whenever reality fails him, he makes up his own and charges the victim for the graves left by the perpetrator.

Read also our article: Washington Wanted to Punish Buyers of Putin's Oil and Is Now Buying His Diesel Itself

He demanded not a single concession from Putin that day. He placed the entire burden of giving ground on the country that had been invaded. The strikes on Russian refineries are Ukraine's last bargaining chip, the only thing that makes Moscow feel the war in its own backyard. If Kyiv stops, it gives up its leverage while the bombs keep falling. Zelenskyy has offered to stop the attacks if Russia also spares Ukrainian power plants. Putin rejected the mutual pause.

Read also our article: Investigation: The Russia Law With a Built-In Escape Hatch: Trump Signs It, Keeps the Key to Doing Nothing, and Holds a Tariff Gun to Europe's Head

Russia spelled out what easing the pressure means that very same day. Five glide bombs hit residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia, killing at least 20 people, including three children. More than 60 people were killed in four days, and more than 100 civilians the week before. Days earlier, Zelenskyy had laid toys in front of a destroyed apartment building in Pryluky where 22 people died, five of them children. "Today Russia thanked everyone for the lifted sanctions with five glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia," he wrote. Every additional billion Moscow earns goes into weapons and drones, missiles and mercenaries. Russia would only stop when it could no longer fight. He spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron about air defenses and warned of new missile strikes in the coming days.

The man being insulted kept his dignity. The Ukrainian team was being "used merely as a smokescreen," Zelenskyy had said Friday evening. That's no way for partners to treat each other, and he called the diesel deal a "weak decision." Kyiv learned about the deal only from the announcement, and the delegation returned from Florida empty-handed. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha pushed back, saying Zelenskyy was leading "our nation in a war for independence, freedom, and dignity," that the people would decide, and that demands shouted from abroad only confirmed he was doing his job well.

The deal was announced while Trump's negotiators Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff were sitting down with Ukrainian representatives in Miami. Just as the talks were about to begin, Trump spent a long time on the phone with Putin. The Americans listed everything Washington was giving the Ukrainians, right down to shared intelligence, and pressed them to stop the refinery strikes. Nobody had openly threatened to cut off intelligence sharing, but everyone in the room could read the threat. One American official denied that. Trump doesn't have much leverage left anyway, having cut most of the aid to Kyiv. Only the intelligence still carries serious weight, along with the weapons he sells to the Europeans for Ukraine.

Daniel Fried, a longtime U.S. ambassador to Poland, found the right image for it. Russia was standing off to the side, waiting for the West to throw "bigger and more beautiful bouquets at its feet." Once you start chasing after Moscow, it just grins and waits for the next offer. What Kushner and Witkoff had been bringing to the table since late September alarmed even Kyiv. They offered to release frozen Russian assets, blocked in the West and once valued at up to $100 billion. They offered to sell parts of oil giant Lukoil to investors from the Gulf, some with business ties to the American negotiators. And they offered to allow Kremlin ally Belarus to export potash. All of it up front, in exchange for a limited ceasefire Moscow had never agreed to. Trump was undermining not only Ukraine's security, Fried warned, but Europe's as well, while Russia intensified its covert war against the continent and everyone acted as if nothing were happening.

Under Trump, the arithmetic of this war is always the same. Since he promised to end it in 24 hours, Kyiv has agreed to an unconditional ceasefire, while Moscow has rejected it. Ukraine got no reward for saying yes, the Kremlin no punishment for saying no. The two sides haven't been this far apart since the shouting match in the Oval Office in 2025, and 18 months of European efforts to keep Trump on board are now in question. Putin still insists on all of Donbas, which his army hasn't even managed to conquer. The American proposal, which Kyiv and Europe are supposed to help draft, is meant to settle territorial questions and postwar prosperity, along with a new security arrangement for Russia and Europe. Exhausted Ukrainians would accept a ceasefire along the current front line, but they reject the Kremlin's demands. Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls the talks "elusive" and speaks of a "strategic stalemate." Zelenskyy disagreed, saying they weren't at a dead end, that the only thing missing was pressure on Moscow. "Shut down their entire economy. Sew Russia's mouth shut. Don't feed it with your own sales."

Back home, the president's own side broke ranks this time. His former vice president, Mike Pence, called the deal a "betrayal" and a blow against the law of the late Senator Lindsey Graham. Outgoing Representative Don Bacon called it a "serious mistake," said the situation looked "desperate," and argued that anyone supporting Putin's war economy was acting immorally. Senate candidate Mike Rogers warned that this man must not be given "an inch." Senator Dan Sullivan sent word that the answer to high prices was Alaska, not Russia. Democrat Jeanne Shaheen pointed out that the deal violated a 2022 law requiring consultation with Congress before any import of Russian energy. Republican Brian Fitzpatrick wrote to Zelenskyy that Congress stood "100 percent" behind him. Democrat Chuck Schumer called it a "pact with the devil" intended only to rescue Trump's declining fortunes, while Senate candidate Chris Pappas described it as a "slap in the face" to Ukraine and its allies. Only a few cheered, including Representative Anna Paulina Luna, who promised Americans substantial benefits.

Europe closed the ranks Trump had opened up. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson regretted the deal, saying energy money was Russia's war chest and the EU would adopt its toughest sanctions package yet on Monday, with 1,600 listings targeting Russia's arms industry. Berlin said it was sticking to the sanctions and working with European partners on further measures, while support for Ukraine remained "unwavering." Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski asked the dry question that exposed the entire deal. Ukraine had destroyed roughly half of Russia's refining capacity, even Moscow was short of fuel, so where exactly was the surplus for export supposed to come from?

For this betrayal, the American driver gets almost nothing. Energy adviser Andrew Lipow called the amount "very small" compared with domestic demand. A gallon of diesel costs around $6.28, up from $3.67 a year ago, driven mainly by Trump's own war against Iran, which has blocked a major shipping route for oil and pushed up prices for all petroleum products, a war Americans blame him for anyway, according to a poll. He's trading away an ally at war for a few cents that may never even reach the pump.

In Kyiv, people stood at the memorial to fallen soldiers, caught between anger and resignation. Trump had "shown his true colors again," said 26-year-old Oleksandr Petrenko. All he cared about was what Americans paid at the pump. A financial adviser from Kropyvnytskyi said it was no surprise, Trump had been working with Putin for a long time. It was the quiet of a city that had heard news like this many times before and still couldn't quite believe it. The arithmetic of this weekend is simple and obscene. The country that's bleeding is supposed to replace its leader, while the country dropping the bombs gets a market for its fuel. A president who promised to end a war has learned to feed it, and calls the hunger peace.