Once in the room, the US envoys reportedly<\/a> signalled that sanctions relief on Russia was coming. But this still left Ukrainian and European officials blindsided by the announcement. Unsurprisingly, the talks ended<\/a> the same day without any agreement and a day earlier than planned.<\/p>\n If the diesel deal between the US and Russia was just about fuel, it would be modest at best. The amounts mentioned in Trump\u2019s announcement<\/a> amount to just under six million barrels. This is roughly a day and a half of US diesel demand based on data from the US Energy Information Administration<\/a>. <\/p>\n The deal will hardly<\/a> have any significant impact on global diesel prices, even if Russia can provide the volumes in Trump\u2019s announcement. And this is already in doubt, given that the lack of Russian diesel exports is primarily due to a Kremlin-imposed export ban<\/a>. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, the rise of diesel prices began with, and is primarily a result of, Trump\u2019s war against Iran<\/a>. So if the deal is about bringing the price of diesel down ahead of the crucial midterm election in the US in early November, it\u2019s unlikely to have a major impact. But its effect on the Ukraine war is likely to be considerably larger and more damaging.<\/p>\n Since returning to power in January 2025, Trump\u2019s approach to ending the Russian war against Ukraine has often been to try and bully Kyiv into concessions. These attempts have largely failed. Ukraine \u2013 and its European allies \u2013 have consistently rejected the idea of ceding any territory to Russia. <\/p>\n Trump\u2019s diesel deal is another attempt to bully by pressuring Ukraine to give up one of its recently most effective tools. Kyiv\u2019s long-range drone and missile campaign against Russian refineries has reportedly<\/a> caused Russian refining capacity to fall by up to 60% over recent months.<\/p>\n In recent weeks, Trump has been trying to force Zelensky to stop targeting Russian refineries<\/a>, blaming Ukraine \u2013 rather than the war against Iran \u2013 for high diesel prices. Kyiv\u2019s position in this regard has been consistent. As Zelensky said<\/a> again after Trump announced his diesel deal: \u201cUkraine will not set Russian oil refineries on fire if Russia does not destroy our energy infrastructure\u201d.<\/p>\n \n This was a reiteration of a proposal made by the Ukrainian president on September 22 and endorsed by Trump. But Putin\u2019s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said<\/a> that a halt to refinery strikes would not on its own bring down prices. That, he said, would also require the lifting of sanctions on Russian energy exports. <\/p>\n The diesel deal with Russia that Trump announced on October 9 provides this sanctions relief. So Putin got the economic half of an energy truce that he really wanted without having to commit to its military half. Indeed, when Trump declared<\/a> an \u201cenergy ceasefire\u201d that \u201cboth parties have agreed\u201d (both sides said they hadn\u2019t agreed anything), Russia greeted Trump\u2019s announcement by striking Ukrainian power plant<\/a>.<\/p>\n Trump followed his announcement of the diesel deal by further aligning himself with the Russian leader, telling Ukraine on October 10 to \u201cget a new leader\u201d<\/a>. Meanwhile it emerged from the talks in Miami at the weekend that Washington has threatened to cut intelligence sharing<\/a> and block weapons sales to Ukraine<\/a> if the strikes continue, although the US has declined to comment on the claims.<\/p>\n Ukraine has recently achieved a major battlefield success with its Operation Vivaldi<\/a> counteroffensive, which analysts believe has halted Russia\u2019s attempts to seize the strategically vital Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. This has made the economic front of the war all the more important.<\/p>\n It has also added strain to already fragile transatlantic relations. The EU\u2019s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said that<\/a> \u201csuspending sanctions on Russian diesel provides Moscow with more revenues to wage war\u201d and that this was \u201cnot the time to ease pressure on Russia, and Europe won\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n But Europe now depends<\/a> more on US diesel than it did in the past, a vulnerability that is likely to limit how hard Europe will push back. Europe\u2019s dependence<\/a> on energy imports from the US more generally also puts a question mark over how effective and sustainable the EU\u2019s next sanctions package will really be.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, a pathway to a comprehensive settlement remains just as hard to envisage as it was before the diesel deal. The lifting of US sanctions on Russian diesel means that even a partial energy truce will now be harder to reach \u2013 adding more pain and suffering for Ukraine as winter approaches. <\/p>\n Most worrying in the long term, all the signs are that under Trump the US is closer to Moscow\u2019s position than at any point since the full-scale invasion.<\/p>\n Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the Nato Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He also regularly provides advice to governments and international organisations. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The deal struck by Donald Trump with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on October 9 to allow Russia to sell millions of tonnes of diesel is a major departure from US policy and runs counter to Ukrainian and European interests. It also directly contradicts a law signed by the US president in September to authorise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1987"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1987\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Bullying tactics<\/h2>\n
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\n US attempts to control Ukraine\u2019s attacks on Russia reflect a fundamental strategic disconnect<\/a>
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\nLong hard winter in prospect for Ukraine<\/h2>\n
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