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 .
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