Trump’s “Diesel Deal” With Russia Was Just the Start

Stephen Sestanovich is the George F. Kennan senior fellow for Russian and Eurasian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.

When U.S. President Donald Trump announced his diesel deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the end of last week, after the two of them had a long phone chat, it was easy to shrug off the move as a feeble effort to limit energy prices in advance of the midterms. Sure, the decision to buy more diesel by relaxing sanctions on Moscow was probably illegal. And yes, it was made without any consultation of U.S. allies. Worst of all, it came just as Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities were ramping up—a bad look, to say the very least. Yet if all the diesel deal showed was that Trump was a bad negotiator (we knew that, right?), that he cared little for alliance solidarity (ditto), and that he was willing to let Putin have a few billion dollars in additional export earnings, the real-world impact of what the president had done might be relatively limited.

A week later, the story looks disturbingly different; the possible consequences, much more serious, and likely to last well beyond the midterms. A day after announcing new diesel imports from Russia, Trump began calling for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s removal from office. He followed this up by claiming that Moscow and Kyiv had agreed to suspend attacks on each other’s main energy targets (for the Ukrainians, that meant oil refineries in Russia; for the Russians, the Ukrainian electric grid). This, it quickly became clear, was pure invention. Reports suggested what had actually happened was that U.S. negotiators were pressing the Ukrainian government to do something far more radical than a mutual ceasefire—to cease its attacks unilaterally, whether Russia complied or not.

Other issues between Washington and Kyiv have been handled in the same way.  Ukrainian representatives who met last week with Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—and officials in Kyiv and Europe who fielded follow-up calls from Washington—reported what they felt were unnerving U.S. threats to cut off intelligence sharing and weapons sales (paid for by European governments). U.S. denials soon followed, but so did reports of cuts to Starlink satellite communications, hampering Ukrainian military operations. So far, there is no word on cessation, or slowdown, of weapons deliveries, but the pattern of firm denial followed by awkward acknowledgment is now firmly in place. Meanwhile, Trump has continued to declare publicly that Zelenskyy is the main obstacle to an agreement on ending the war; Putin, he proclaims, is the one who really wants peace.

In searching for a new way to handle Trump, Ukraine’s leadership has seemed suddenly at sea.

It is hard to overstate how much this new public hostility by U.S. officials—above all, the president—has disoriented Ukraine’s leadership. Ever since the infamous Oval Office blowup of early 2025, Zelenskyy and his colleagues have honed a remarkably effective approach for dealing with the Trump administration—profuse public expressions of gratitude coupled with lawyerly, behind-the-scenes haggling on the specifics of any issue. Now the formula has been almost reversed. In interviews, Zelenskyy has criticized “weak” decisions by the Trump administration, saying it is not on “the right side of history.” Ukraine, he warns, is “losing a strong partner.” On Trump administration claims that the loss of access to Starlink was a “technical” issue, Zelenskyy dismissed the idea. Yet his initial response to the U.S. demand that Ukraine stop its attacks on Russian refineries was very different. For several days, he acceded to it (before finally saying “we’re done”). Public quarrels, in short, but quiet docility in practice. In searching for a new way to handle Trump, Ukraine’s leadership has seemed suddenly at sea.

European leaders show the same confusion and diffidence. To be sure, Zelenskyy is still welcomed in capitals large and small and is promised ongoing support; in London, King Charles III received him for a private audience, and the new prime minister, Andy Burnham, greeted him at 10 Downing Street by offering a military package. More open criticism of the U.S. president may be coming. So far, however, there is no sign of anything like the unified pushback that major European allies mustered after Trump’s jovial summit meeting with Putin in Alaska last year. At that time, they descended on the White House en masse (bringing Zelenskyy with them), to chide Trump for yielding too much ground to Moscow. Now, even Mark Rutte, NATO’s secretary-general and a famous Trump whisperer, has said little.

As for the U.S. Congress, members’ focus is admittedly on the midterms—as it has to be. Yet, measured against the scale of the administration’s challenge (it’s rare that presidents so openly flout the law), the congressional response to this near-certain violation of the 2022 Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act remains extremely muted. Tuesday saw the release of a letter of protest signed by six Democratic and six Republican senators, some of them retiring this year. A similar letter signed by twenty-two members of the House of Representatives followed. And that’s about it.

No Turning Back?

As this drama unfolds, it’s likely that many who would otherwise feel the need to take the president on are consoled by the thought that Trump, until now predictably TACO-like, will back off again. He’ll be chastened by the midterms, or be told that Putin is the world leader the American public most despises, or be reminded what happened to Biden’s poll numbers after the collapse in Afghanistan. All in all, Trump could decide he’s just got too many other problems to deal with. (In this spirit, one experienced former diplomat has joked that the president must be terrible at cards.)

Perhaps. Yet Trump may have crossed a watershed in his war diplomacy this past week. Rather than describe his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts, as he has in the past, as badly behaved children, he now angrily casts Zelenskyy as the single real obstacle to peace. Rather than work on partial de-escalation of the fighting, as the Ukrainians have urged for several months, he now seems to see a final settlement as his immediate target. Rather than focus on the war he started, against Iran, he now treats this one as the source of global instability. Finally, rather than see the prospect of postwar riches as the key that will bring Putin to the table, he now acts as though pressure—on Zelenskyy, not Putin—will be the crucial instrument of a breakthrough.

These fundamental changes in Trump’s view of the conflict may not last. But if they do, a very dangerous period lies ahead. It will bring prolonged suffering for ordinary Ukrainians (and maybe even for Russians as well), lasting damage to U.S. alliances, and bitter debate here at home.