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 fresh US sanctions and tariffs on nations that import Russian oil and gas.

The timing of this deal was unfortunate. A senior Ukrainian and European delegation were in Miami for talks with Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. On the table were apparently new US proposals which included a pre-winter de-escalation in the four-and-a-half-year war.

Once in the room, the US envoys reportedly signalled that sanctions relief on Russia was coming. But this still left Ukrainian and European officials blindsided by the announcement. Unsurprisingly, the talks ended the same day without any agreement and a day earlier than planned.

If the diesel deal between the US and Russia was just about fuel, it would be modest at best. The amounts mentioned in Trump’s announcement 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.

The deal will hardly have any significant impact on global diesel prices, even if Russia can provide the volumes in Trump’s announcement. And this is already in doubt, given that the lack of Russian diesel exports is primarily due to a Kremlin-imposed export ban.

Meanwhile, the rise of diesel prices began with, and is primarily a result of, Trump’s war against Iran. 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’s unlikely to have a major impact. But its effect on the Ukraine war is likely to be considerably larger and more damaging.

Bullying tactics

Since returning to power in January 2025, Trump’s approach to ending the Russian war against Ukraine has often been to try and bully Kyiv into concessions. These attempts have largely failed. Ukraine – and its European allies – have consistently rejected the idea of ceding any territory to Russia.

Trump’s diesel deal is another attempt to bully by pressuring Ukraine to give up one of its recently most effective tools. Kyiv’s long-range drone and missile campaign against Russian refineries has reportedly caused Russian refining capacity to fall by up to 60% over recent months.

In recent weeks, Trump has been trying to force Zelensky to stop targeting Russian refineries, blaming Ukraine – rather than the war against Iran – for high diesel prices. Kyiv’s position in this regard has been consistent. As Zelensky said again after Trump announced his diesel deal: “Ukraine will not set Russian oil refineries on fire if Russia does not destroy our energy infrastructure”.

Read more: US attempts to control Ukraine’s attacks on Russia reflect a fundamental strategic disconnect

This was a reiteration of a proposal made by the Ukrainian president on September 22 and endorsed by Trump. But Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said 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.

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 an “energy ceasefire” that “both parties have agreed” (both sides said they hadn’t agreed anything), Russia greeted Trump’s announcement by striking Ukrainian power plant.

Long hard winter in prospect for Ukraine

Trump followed his announcement of the diesel deal by further aligning himself with the Russian leader, telling Ukraine on October 10 to “get a new leader”. Meanwhile it emerged from the talks in Miami at the weekend that Washington has threatened to cut intelligence sharing and block weapons sales to Ukraine if the strikes continue, although the US has declined to comment on the claims.

Ukraine has recently achieved a major battlefield success with its Operation Vivaldi counteroffensive, which analysts believe has halted Russia’s attempts to seize the strategically vital Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. This has made the economic front of the war all the more important.

It has also added strain to already fragile transatlantic relations. The EU’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, said that “suspending sanctions on Russian diesel provides Moscow with more revenues to wage war” and that this was “not the time to ease pressure on Russia, and Europe won’t.”

But Europe now depends more on US diesel than it did in the past, a vulnerability that is likely to limit how hard Europe will push back. Europe’s dependence on energy imports from the US more generally also puts a question mark over how effective and sustainable the EU’s next sanctions package will really be.

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 – adding more pain and suffering for Ukraine as winter approaches.

Most worrying in the long term, all the signs are that under Trump the US is closer to Moscow’s position than at any point since the full-scale invasion.