Trump Lifts Sanctions to Buy Russian Diesel; Kyiv Calls It a Gift
After a call with Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump announced that Russia will supply 300,000 tonnes of diesel immediately, 500,000 more in November and a further million after that, with the Treasury issuing a licence permitting Russian diesel imports until April 2027. Volodymyr Zelensky called it “a weak decision, unfortunately, a weak decision by strong partners”.
The order of the evening matters. Mr Trump posted the announcement while his envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner were in a room with Ukrainian officials discussing how to end the war, which is why Mr Zelensky’s statement reads as it does: “I believe our team is simply being used as a smokescreen. And that is certainly not fair. It is certainly not how partners should treat each other.” He added that allowing Russia to sell petroleum products “is an investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged”. The Kremlin then confirmed a readiness to supply oil and products but named no volumes and no dates, and separately used the same call to close a door: the foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said Ukrainian drone attacks meant Kyiv had “interrupted the possibility of an immediate resumption of the negotiation process”. Hours later a Ukrainian drone strike set a fuel facility in Russia’s Rostov region alight, on a single report that says more than fifty drones were intercepted and nobody was hurt. A separate meeting in Miami this morning was described as productive, and is worth naming accurately: Mr Witkoff says it involved the E3, the European Commission, Ukraine and NATO. Russia was not there, so it is not the talks Mr Putin had just ruled out. Britain sits at that table as an E3 member. Of the 4.8 million tonnes promised, three million are conditional on refineries Ukraine has been bombing.