Trump strikes deal with Putin for Russian diesel in sharp reversal of US policy ahead of midterms

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said he has struck a deal to ob­tain diesel from Rus­sia, a stun­ning re­ver­sal of years of U.S. pres­sure on Moscow over its war with Ukraine and an at­tempt to ad­dress high fu­el prices ahead of the U.S. midterm elec­tions.

Trump said on so­cial me­dia on Fri­day that he struck the deal with Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin in a phone call in which he was ex­pect­ed to dis­cuss a sus­pect­ed case of plague in Rus­sia. In­stead, Trump an­nounced that Rus­sia will im­me­di­ate­ly sup­ply more than 300,000 tons of diesel, fol­lowed by an ad­di­tion­al 500,000 tons in No­vem­ber and 1 mil­lion tons “im­me­di­ate­ly there­after.” Rus­sia will de­liv­er an ad­di­tion­al 3 mil­lion tons “with­in a short pe­ri­od of time” af­ter that, he wrote.

Trump’s shock­ing an­nounce­ment comes af­ter he signed a sweep­ing Rus­sia sanc­tions law last month that aimed at clamp­ing down on Rus­sia’s en­er­gy rev­enues, among oth­er ar­eas, that fu­el its war against Ukraine.

Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Ze­len­skyy called it, “a weak de­ci­sion, un­for­tu­nate­ly, a weak de­ci­sion by strong part­ners,” ac­cord­ing to a state­ment re­leased by the Ukrain­ian Em­bassy in Wash­ing­ton.

Trump an­nounced the deal as his en­voy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kush­n­er were meet­ing with Ukrain­ian of­fi­cials in Mi­a­mi to dis­cuss a pro­pos­al to try to end the Rus­sia-Ukraine war.

“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,” Ze­len­skyy said.

Trump’s move casts doubt on the like­li­hood of the White House im­pos­ing sanc­tions on Rus­sia this month, giv­en that a bi­par­ti­san law passed by Con­gress di­rects the ad­min­is­tra­tion to tar­get the top im­porters of Russ­ian oil and gas.

Trump, in his an­nounce­ment, did not ad­dress the sanc­tions or Rus­sia’s war but said, “Low­er prices for Amer­i­cans, es­pe­cial­ly our Great Farm­ers, Ranch­ers, and Truck­ers, is my Great­est Pri­or­i­ty.”

Wash­ing­ton and Moscow of­fer few de­tails on deal

The White House did not im­me­di­ate­ly re­spond to ques­tions about who was pay­ing for the diesel from Rus­sia and when the fu­el be­ing sup­plied un­der the agree­ment would be­come avail­able. It al­so did not clar­i­fy whether sub­se­quent sup­plies of Russ­ian diesel set to come next month would be sup­plied pri­or to Elec­tion Day on Nov. 3.

Gas prices glob­al­ly have surged as the war in Iran up­ends the en­er­gy sec­tor. While diesel fu­ture prices dipped on the news on Fri­day, the na­tion­al av­er­age for a gal­lon of diesel in the U.S. re­mained high at $6.28, ac­cord­ing to AAA, af­ter hit­ting a record $6.52 on Sept. 22.

A state­ment from Putin, re­leased by the Krem­lin on Fri­day, said that dur­ing their call he and Trump ded­i­cat­ed “sig­nif­i­cant at­ten­tion to the prospects of re­solv­ing the Ukrain­ian cri­sis” and al­so dis­cussed “the sit­u­a­tion around Iran and var­i­ous as­pects of bi­lat­er­al re­la­tions.”

Rus­sia “con­firmed its readi­ness to sup­ply oil and oil prod­ucts to the Amer­i­can and glob­al mar­kets,” Putin said. “I am con­fi­dent that this will have a pos­i­tive im­pact on the en­tire glob­al econ­o­my.”

The two lead­ers agreed to con­tin­ue con­tacts, Putin said in the state­ment.

Trump and Putin’s deal draws im­me­di­ate back­lash

Ze­len­skyy, in a lengthy post on­line re­act­ing to the deal, said Rus­sia would re­pay it “with fur­ther ter­ror and per­fidy.” He cast it as an in­vest­ment in the war, al­low­ing it to be pro­longed.

“It plays in­to Rus­sia’s hands — al­low­ing it to kill more, wage war for longer, have even less re­spect for Amer­i­ca, and in­flict even greater loss­es and dam­age on the world,” he said.

Rep. Don Bey­er, the se­nior House De­mo­c­rat on the Joint Eco­nom­ic Com­mit­tee, called Trump’s an­nounce­ment “in­fu­ri­at­ing.”

“This is what we warned any­one who would lis­ten: Trump isn’t the slight­est bit trust­wor­thy when it comes to Rus­sia,” Bey­er said in a state­ment on X. “Giv­ing him ex­pand­ed tar­iff pow­ers in hopes he would use them to help Ukraine was a mis­take. Now he’s lift­ing sanc­tions on Russ­ian fos­sil fu­els.”

The law Trump signed last month en­vi­sions sanc­tions on Russ­ian of­fi­cials, banks and a shad­ow fleet of tankers and bans all new U.S. in­vest­ment in Rus­sia and the han­dling of sov­er­eign debt.

It al­so di­rect­ed Trump to im­pose tar­iffs of up to 100% on the top five im­porters of Russ­ian oil or nat­ur­al gas, with an ex­cep­tion for coun­tries that im­port less than 15% of Rus­sia’s nat­ur­al gas ex­ports and have tak­en sig­nif­i­cant steps to re­duce those im­ports.

The U.S. has not im­port­ed Russ­ian oil or gas since 2022, when the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion banned them be­cause of Moscow’s in­va­sion of Ukraine, ac­cord­ing to the U.S. En­er­gy In­for­ma­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Trea­sury De­part­ment moves to ease diesel sanc­tions for six months

Short­ly af­ter Trump made the an­nounce­ment, the Trea­sury De­part­ment said it was im­me­di­ate­ly is­su­ing a tem­po­rary li­cense al­low­ing Russ­ian diesel to be sup­plied to the glob­al mar­ket.

This is the lat­est in sev­er­al li­cens­es the U.S. Trea­sury has is­sued re­gard­ing Russ­ian fu­el ship­ments since the start of the Iran war ear­li­er this year. But it is the first such li­cense to ease sanc­tions on diesel for a pe­ri­od last­ing longer than the stan­dard 30-day win­dow since the start of the Ukraine war.

The new so-called gen­er­al li­cense means U.S. sanc­tions will not ap­ply un­til April 2027 on de­liv­er­ies of Russ­ian diesel that has been loaded on­to tankers as of Fri­day. The de­part­ment ex­tend­ed sim­i­lar eas­ing of sanc­tions in March and April even though Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Scott Bessent had ruled out such a move ear­li­er in the year.

The ex­ten­sions con­tin­ue to un­der­score how the fall­out from the Iran war has boost­ed Moscow’s abil­i­ty to prof­it from its en­er­gy ex­ports, which had been re­strained by the U.S. and oth­er al­lies since the in­va­sion of Ukraine.

It’s un­clear what kind of im­pact the move will have on oil prices, giv­en over­all glob­al sup­ply short­ages.

“It’s kind of shuf­fling deck chairs on the Ti­tan­ic,” said Michael Lynch of the En­er­gy Pol­i­cy Re­search Foun­da­tion, a non-par­ti­san re­search in­sti­tu­tion fo­cused on en­er­gy and eco­nom­ics.

“If we get diesel from Rus­sia, ba­si­cal­ly it means that their ex­ist­ing cus­tomers are not go­ing to get it and they’ll have to go some­where else, and that will keep the price ba­si­cal­ly where it is now,” Lynch said.

Rus­sia, once a ma­jor ex­porter of diesel, has banned ex­ports since Ju­ly as it has strug­gled to meet de­mand in­side the coun­try be­cause of Ukraine’s re­peat­ed at­tacks on Russ­ian oil re­finer­ies. The In­ter­na­tion­al En­er­gy Agency says Russ­ian diesel out­put has fall­en by about 30%.

Russ­ian Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Alexan­der No­vak told state news agency Tass that Rus­sia is “im­me­di­ate­ly start­ing to lift re­stric­tions on diesel ex­ports ahead of sched­ule.” He said that Moscow could start sup­plies to the U.S. al­ready in Oc­to­ber, and that Rus­sia’s do­mes­tic mar­ket will be “ful­ly sup­plied” with diesel, as well. —WASH­ING­TON (AP)

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Sto­ry by MICHELLE L. PRICE and COLLIN BINK­LEY | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Will Weis­sert and Kon­stan­tin Toropin in Wash­ing­ton, Alex Veiga in Los An­ge­les and Farnoush Amiri in New York con­tributed to this re­port.