Why Trump's Russian diesel deal worries Kyiv more than it helps U.S. drivers

A Malta-flagged tanker loaded with Russian diesel left Russia on Oct. 23 bound for the United States, the first cargo under a deal President Donald Trump announced after a phone call with Vladimir Putin. Ukraine, its European backers and a bipartisan group of U.S. senators say the deal does far more for the Kremlin than for American drivers.

The numbers are on their side. U.S. diesel averaged $6.35 a gallon on Monday, Oct. 26, just under the record $6.53 set in September, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Goldman Sachs has estimated that the first two months of Russian deliveries would cut wholesale prices on the Gulf Coast by just 2 to 5 cents a gallon, Defense News reported.

What did Trump agree to?

Trump eased sanctions on Russian diesel after an Oct. 9 call with Putin. In a Truth Social post that day, he said Russia would supply hundreds of thousands of tons of diesel right away and that prices would fall fast.

The same day, U.S. envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Ukrainian negotiators in Miami and told them the White House hoped the deal would soften Moscow’s position in peace talks, according to Defense News. Witkoff has since met Putin in person again, his ninth such meeting since February 2025. We covered the latest Witkoff-Putin round here.

Will it lower prices at the pump?

Very little, according to the energy agencies and analysts tracking the market.

The first shipment equals about 2% of a month of U.S. diesel demand, CNBC reported. The International Energy Agency said in its October oil market report that easing Russia’s diesel export ban is unlikely to change global supply in a meaningful way, because Russia does not have the working refinery capacity to send much more.

The bigger driver of U.S. prices sits in the Persian Gulf. Diesel stayed under $3.90 a gallon from August 2025 until the U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran began on Feb. 28. It then jumped nearly 25% in a single week, to $4.86, EIA data show. Diesel exports from the Gulf fell to 390,000 barrels a day in August, just over a quarter of prewar levels, the IEA has said.

Even Moscow has pointed the finger at the Gulf. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Georgy Borisenko told reporters on Oct. 12 that the fuel market would only settle once the conflict around Iran is resolved.

Why Kyiv is alarmed

Ukraine’s long-range drone strikes on Russian refineries are one of the few pressure points Kyiv has. Russian diesel production fell by nearly 30% as those attacks intensified, the IEA said in a Sept. 17 analysis.

The deal gives Washington a reason to want those strikes stopped. On Oct. 11, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered to hold off on refinery strikes if Russia stopped hitting Ukraine’s power grid. Ukraine paused the strikes at Trump’s request, he later told the Financial Times, but Russian attacks on its energy system continued, so Kyiv resumed.

The lull still helped Moscow. No strikes on Russian refineries were reported last week, and the estimated value of Russia’s seaborne crude shipments hit a wartime high of $2.76 billion, up about $430 million from the week before, Bloomberg reported.

Zelenskyy has also rejected Trump’s claim that Ukrainian strikes are to blame for high U.S. diesel prices. Speaking in Brussels on Oct. 16, he said the deal would put more money “straight into Putin’s pocket to fund this war,” according to Defense News.

Ukraine is working with far less refining capacity than Russia. Zelenskyy has said his country is down to a single oil refinery, while Russia has 32 major refineries, according to IEA figures cited by Defense News.

Who has objected in Washington

The pushback has come from both parties:

Oct. 11: Four Republican and three Democratic senators urged the administration to reverse course, saying in a joint statement that the United States “should not provide Putin with a financial lifeline.”
Oct. 13: Twelve senators from both parties, including Republicans Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and John Cornyn of Texas, wrote to Trump that the deal would barely move fuel prices and called it a gift to an adversary.
Day of the announcement: Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., wrote that Putin wants the United States to pressure Ukraine into halting refinery strikes.

Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War and the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center argue the deal lets Moscow build economic ties with Washington before any settlement in Ukraine, without giving up any of its demands on Kyiv.

Why the timing matters

The deal lands days before the Nov. 3 midterms, with fuel costs high on voters’ minds. In a Pew Research Center survey taken Sept. 28 to Oct. 4, 84% of registered voters called the economy very important to their vote, and 54% said the same about energy policy.

Missile warnings and Starlink

Within days of the sanctions move, Ukrainian officials accused Washington of withholding missile warnings and throttling the Starlink service their military depends on. Trump denied any interruption. Zelenskyy said on Saturday, Oct. 24, that both had been restored. The order to limit Starshield for Ukraine came from inside the White House, sources said.

Russian strikes have not slowed. Russia fired 16 ballistic missiles and more than 280 drones at Ukraine overnight from Monday into Tuesday, Zelenskyy said, aiming at energy, transport and ordinary city infrastructure across the country.

The same week, the U.N. Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine concluded that Russian authorities had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity through their attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.