“I want to thank president Putin, to be honest with you,” Donald Trump said last weekend. It should have been the other way round. Trump had agreed to pay Vladimir Putin billions of dollars for Russian diesel that will have a negligible effect on US prices.
Such asymmetry is also known as something for nothing. Trump’s nothing is that the cost of diesel is unlikely to fall before the US midterm elections. Putin’s something is a breach in US sanctions and more money to bomb Ukraine.
I am unqualified to make psychological judgments but an amateur can see that Trump is blaming Volodymyr Zelenskiy for a problem of his own making. The chief driver of rising diesel prices is the impact of Trump’s Operation Epic Fury. Iran and its proxies have knocked out big chunks of Gulf refining capacity, which has sharply reduced global diesel supply. In defiance of Trump’s requests, Ukraine has further disrupted supply by striking Russian refineries. Zelenskiy is thus a ready-made scapegoat for a problem largely caused by the US president.
Things could get still worse for Ukraine. On the day that Trump announced the Russia deal, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and chief envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Ukrainians in Florida. They threatened to block weapons sales and end US intelligence sharing if Ukraine continued to strike Russian refineries. This would deprive Zelenskiy of the last useful bit of US support against Russia’s escalating assault.
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In the week before Trump’s diesel deal, more than 100 Ukrainians, including at least 20 children, were killed by Russian missiles. Another US president would be pressuring Russia to stop killing innocents. Trump is instead giving them the means to kill more. He is also giving Russia a green light to keep helping Iran, which it has been supplying with satellite and tracking data to target US bases and allied installations in the region. In a very real sense, therefore, Trump is assisting attacks on America.
Whenever Trump is asked about Russia’s support for Iran, he downplays or ignores the question. On one occasion, he said Putin had reassured him that no such help was being given. But Putin is helpful to Iran, which means he can dangle the promise of brokering an end to the Gulf war.
Zelenskiy, on the other hand, is a constant reminder of Trump’s deal-making impotence. No matter how much US allies urge Trump to back Ukraine, he is unable to forgive Zelenskiy for what he represents. Trump vowed to end the Russia-Ukraine war within 24 hours of taking office, which would have entailed Ukraine’s capitulation. Zelenskiy was predictably unwilling to do that. Nor is he now.
We are thus left with a mixture of bluster and threat. On bluster, Trump said on Sunday that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to an energy ceasefire in which Russia stops targeting Ukraine’s energy grid and Ukraine lays off Russia’s refineries. This was “effective immediately”. Zelenskiy said that this was the first he had heard of it.
On Monday, Zelenskiy said Russia had attacked power and gas facilities across Ukraine on Sunday night. He insists Kyiv is still willing to observe a ceasefire if Moscow does the same. But he has little incentive to do so. Russia has already taken out most of Ukraine’s grid. Zelenskiy’s imperative is to deprive Russia of the revenues to keep attacking.
On threat, Trump said on Saturday that Ukraine needs a new president. He could go a step further and make America’s intelligence support contingent on Ukraine holding elections. No country can carry out orderly elections – a quintessential peacetime activity – while another nation occupies a fifth of its territory and is randomly targeting the rest. It would be reckless for Zelenskiy to agree to Trump’s demand and there is scant chance that he will.
Ironically, Trump’s ire is boosting Zelenskiy’s support among Ukrainians. They have plenty to complain about, including corruption in Zelenskiy’s circle. But he is getting a “Trump bump” in the polls that has helped sway elections in Canada, Australia, Denmark and arguably the Vatican. Nations tend to close ranks when outsiders try to choose their leaders. Trump has called Zelenskiy a dictator while saying Putin is his friend. No prizes for guessing which of the two is on display in a gold-framed photograph at the White House.
The election that matters to Trump is the US midterms. Should he have been serious about reducing US energy prices, he would have started months ago. But nothing he is trying, including Russian shipments, is likely to lift his party’s bleak prospects. Zelenskiy’s headache is that Trump is preparing to blame a Democratic victory on him. The iron law of Trump is that nothing is ever his fault.
– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026
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