The NYT reports: Trump Says He Will Import Russian Diesel Fuel Amid High Prices.
President Trump said on Friday that he had reached an agreement with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to immediately import Russian diesel fuel to the U.S. market, undercutting U.S. sanctions.
The Kremlin issued a statement saying Mr. Putin had expressed a willingness to supply more oil and other fuels to the world in a phone call with Mr. Trump.
Minutes after Mr. Trump’s announcement, the Treasury Department said it was lifting sanctions on Russian diesel exports “to allow the supply of Russian diesel to the global market.” The announcement gave Russian energy producers a general license to sell diesel fuel until April.
I keep reading that Russia has agreed to “supply” fuel to the US and global markets, which almost sounds like charity. No, the Russians are being allowed to sell fuel to the rest of the world.
More to the point: the US placed sanctions on Russian oil in 2022 because of their invasion of Ukraine.
So the real headline should be: US Lifting Sanctions on Russian Oil So Maybe the GOP Can Get an Election Bump; Betrayal of Ukraine a Side Benefit.
This is ultimately direct aid to Russia in their war with Ukraine.
The return of Russian diesel to international markets would be a win for Mr. Putin, who has sought for years to break the ice on U.S. sanctions against Moscow’s energy sector.
But it is also noteworthy that Russia had its own export ban in place.
Edward Fishman, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said he doubted that Russia could supply as much diesel fuel as Mr. Trump said it had promised.
“The reason Russia imposed an export ban was that Ukrainian strikes had degraded its refining output, necessitating fuel rationing for domestic use,” Mr. Fishman said. “This strikes me as classic Putin — empty promises aimed at sowing further divisions in the trans-Atlantic alliance.”
Indeed, it had already struck me that Trump has made a huge announcement in hopes of calming the electoral jitters in the Midwest, but the plan is likely to backfire because even if there are some price effects, one suspects they will be modest at best, and certainly not quick enough to change minds given that we are just three weeks away from Election Day. This will come across as a too-late empty promise, if it registers in the public consciousness at all.
And, of course, there is the fact that while these may sound like massive numbers to Trump, they are not so large relative to need.
Even if Mr. Putin were to export as much diesel as Mr. Trump claimed, the amounts would be small relative to global demand for the fuel, which is used in trucks, ships, buses, farm machinery and electricity generators. The world burns roughly 30 million barrels of diesel and related fuels every day.
The agreement would most likely amount to about 72,000 barrels of diesel in October, 124,000 in November and between 240,000 and 720,000 in the following months, if Russia could indeed deliver, said Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, a Washington-based research firm. In the last three months of 2025, Russia exported about 800,000 barrels a day.
“This is a relatively small increase,” Mr. Book said. “It could have some price effect, but it’s nothing like restoring the missing barrels.”
See also the AP: Boosting US oil supplies with Russian diesel unlikely to have much impact on prices, experts say.
Meanwhile, all of this is a betrayal of Ukraine.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine criticized the diesel deal on Friday, while noting that Ukrainian negotiators were in Florida to meet U.S. officials to discuss ending the war with Russia.
“This only fuels Putin’s war effort and gives him the ability to wage war even more aggressively,” Mr. Zelensky said.
When asked about that criticism, Mr. Trump shrugged it off.
[…]
The diesel agreement is the latest sign that the Trump administration is open to business deals with Russia before the end of the war, a shift from Mr. Trump’s prior stance that Mr. Putin would need to stop the fighting first.
The administration appears to believe that such deals could help pave the way for peace. But analysts note that Mr. Putin could simply use the perceived benefits to the United States from those deals — such as lower energy prices — to distract the White House from its efforts to end the war.
All of this in the context of another Russian oil-related story this week:
In another example of dealmaking, the U.S. officials leading the Ukraine peace talks, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, last month discussed with Mr. Putin a bid to buy the international assets of Lukoil, the Russian energy giant that is under sanctions. The administration has argued that the deal, which would give the U.S. government a stake in those assets, would benefit U.S. taxpayers and help lower energy prices.
First, “another example of dealmaking”? Shouldn’t that read, “In an example of open corruption”? The so-called peace envoys are making business deals with the Russians.
From a couple of days ago, also in the NYT: In Trump’s Russian Oil Deal, Middle East Funds Are the Biggest Owners.
The deal, for a worldwide portfolio of oil fields, refineries and gas stations now owned by the sanctioned Russian energy giant Lukoil, has become intertwined with the U.S. talks with Russia over ending the war in Ukraine, The New York Times reported last week.
The United States government, through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, would get a stake of about 15 percent in the deal, without investing any cash up front, the people said.
The leader of the investor group, Todd Boehly, an American billionaire who has donated $2 million to pro-Trump causes in the last two years, would get a smaller minority stake.
But more than half of the equity will be cumulatively held by investors in the Middle East, according to three participants in the negotiations. The investors include entities tied to the royal family in Abu Dhabi and to two billionaire Syrian-born Qatari brothers, who are business partners with Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, and Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter.
So, the US is getting a stake in a Russian asset? A Trump donor is getting a slice? Kushner’s Middle Eastern business partners are involved.
While one might call all of this “examples of dealmaking,” I think that the more appropriate descriptions are “corruption” and “betrayal of Ukraine.”
Oh, and here’s a bonus: Russia has been helping Iran. Here’s a CNN report from March: Russia is aiding Iran’s war effort by providing intel on US military targets, sources say.
And speaking of Ukraine (via Politico): Strikes killing 17 are Russia’s ‘thanks’ for US diesel sanctions lift, Zelenskyy says).
A Russian attack that killed at least 17 people including three children in Ukraine are Moscow’s “thanks for the lifting on sanctions on diesel exports,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday.
Our foreign policy is being run by venal fools.
Media note: I had to go looking for this story on NYT, finally finding it via a Google search. It is not on the online front page, nor did I see it in the list of stories under “US” or “World.” It was not on the print front page. Is this really a more minor story than autumn leaves, Thanksgiving recipes, or parking? I get the focus on Isaias and the election coverage, but come on.
