WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump said the United States will begin importing significant amounts of diesel fuel from Russia after an agreement reached with President Vladimir Putin, an extraordinary reversal of U.S. policy that lifts sanctions on Moscow in a bid to lower fuel prices before the midterms.
The move, announced less than one month before the Nov. 3 midterm election, comes as high fuel prices caused by the war in Iran pose major liabilities for Trump and Republicans as they try to hold onto power in Congress. The agreement upends years of U.S. efforts to cut off Russian energy from the global markets after Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Trump, in an Oct. 9 post on Truth Social, said the deal came together during a “highly successful discussion” with Putin. He said Russia will supply U.S. and global marketplaces with 300,000 tons of diesel fuel “immediately” and an additional 1 million tons in November. Trump said Russia will then deliver 3 million tons of diesel fuel “within a short period of time,” though he suggested it will be based on the condition of Russian diesel refineries.
“That is a big deal,” Trump later told reporters at the White House on Oct. 9, thanking Putin by name. “We have massive amounts of oil coming into our country, and it’s diesel, which is what we want.”
President Donald Trump said on Friday he secured an agreement from Russian President Vladimir Putin to supply markets with Russian diesel fuel as he works to bring down energy costs ahead of the midterm elections.
Energy industry analysts, however, say the agreement — which sparked anger in Ukraine — isn’t likely to lower diesel prices in any meaningful way.
Trump wrote on social media that Putin agreed to “immediately supply” more than 300,000 tons of diesel to global energy markets, with another 500,000 tons promised in November. Together, the amounts — equal to 6 million barrels of diesel fuel — would cover about a day and a half worth of US demand, according to the US Energy Information Administration.
Trump said millions more tons of Russian diesel would be supplied following the first tranches “based on the condition of their Diesel Refineries.”
“We are talking PERHAPS a 5-6% increase in supply between now and year end,” Dan Pickering, founder and chief investment officer at Pickering Energy Partners, said about the the president’s announcement in an email.
“Bottom line — this is helpful but not a needle mover for global diesel markets,” Pickering said. “Sidenote — there is a reason Trump talked about volumes in tons instead of barrels. The tons number looks bigger to a general observer. This is more politics than a game changer.”
Russia banned exports of diesel in early July, after Ukrainian drone strikes on its refineries triggered widespread fuel shortages across the country. This cut roughly 800,000 barrels per day from the global market — at a time when supplies were already tight because of the US war against Iran.
The ban was extended last month, aggravating cost pressures on energy.
According to the Kremlin readout of the phone call between the two leaders, Putin told Trump that Russia was “ready to supply oil and petroleum products to the US and global markets.”
“I am confident that this will have a positive impact on the entire global economy,” Putin said, according to the Kremlin.
Trump echoed that statement later on Friday, telling reporters at the White House that “oil prices are already dropping like a rock. So, we’re very happy to get it.”
But analysts — and commodities traders — raised doubts that Russia would be able to live up to that promise.
At the close of trading on Friday, diesel futures were down by about 4%.
But Trump’s announcement was met with anger in Ukraine. Kyiv has long advocated for tougher sanctions on Russian energy exports, arguing that oil and gas revenues are a major source of funding for Russia’s war machine.
Ukraine has also stepped up its attacks on Russian oil infrastructure over the past few months, refusing to stop despite calls from Trump to do so. Just this week, Kyiv has claimed strikes on four different refineries across Russia.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky called the move to allow Russia to export diesel “a weak decision of strong partners.”
“This is additional money for this war, for the suffering, and of course against us. This is only fuels Putin and gives him the possibility to fight more,” he said on social media.
The past few months have been exceptionally deadly for Ukrainian civilians as Russia has managed to take advantage of Kyiv’s critical shortage of air defense missiles, launching near non-stop aerial attacks against Ukrainian cities. One such strike on a bus stop in eastern Ukraine killed more than 30 people on Thursday.
Zelensky has made it clear the timing of the announcement — just as a top-level Ukrainian delegation arrived to Miami for talks with US envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner — makes it all the more painful for Kyiv.
“In this exact moment when our team is talking to the American team in Florida, the US President has a conversation with Kremlin leader, with the leader of this war, the leader of this aggression,” he said.
Former US officials say it is unclear if Putin even has the amount of diesel that Trump cited to sell.
Richard Nephew, a former principal deputy coordinator for sanctions policy at the State Department, noted that “the message it sends and the damage it does to the broader sanctions regime is very significant.”
“How does anyone take the sanctions regime seriously?” he questioned, noting that if the US is going to say that they need to use sanctions relief to address an economic issue, “how can we convincingly argue that anyone else shouldn’t use the same excuse?”
A former senior State Department official said it doesn’t matter if Putin can actually deliver the diesel because “now he’s achieved the result he wants” which is Trump thinking he’s gotten a pre-election bump and it might have an impact on the markets.
The timing of the call with the start of the talks with Ukraine is no coincidence.
“Putin is a lot of things, but he’s not stupid,” they said.
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
