Traitor Trump: Sells out Ukraine, buys Russian oil

With Trump’s second term being one of flip-flops regarding support for Ukraine, a new reprieve has been offered to Ukraine’s invader; this time through the reopening of the market for its fuel. On 9 October, an agreement with Vladimir Putin was announced by Donald Trump. An initial 300,000 tonnes of Russian diesel followed by further instalments bring the promised total to 4.8 million tonnes. These are announced volumes, not yet verified deliveries.

Nevertheless, the political flip-flop is clear. Relief is being offered to the aggressor whilst its invasion of Ukraine continues, with civilian centres in Ukraine experiencing devastating daily attacks.^[1]

This article explores the details, potential motivations, and consequences.

The Promise and the Price

Under Treasury’s General License 135, transactions involving Russian-origin diesel, including US imports, are authorised until 7 April 2027. Permission has not merely been granted for one cargo. A six-month window has been opened for sales, delivery and importation, subject to the licence’s restrictions. The concession has thus been made before the promised benefit has been demonstrated. ^[2]

The fuel-price justification is difficult to reconcile with the quantities involved. As reported by Reuters, the initial pledge, distributed over a month, amounts to approximately 73,000 barrels daily. Analysts estimated that an additional 400,000–850,000 barrels daily are needed for material relief. Meanwhile, a recovery of damaged Russian refining capacity before the year-end, following Ukraine’s successful attacks, was also doubted by market sources.^[3]

Discernible movement in prices before the 3 November midterms is likely to be modest, if at all, unless expectations rise beyond what is known. So far, a meaningful and sustained relief is far from assured. Political credit can be claimed by Trump immediately, whilst any marginal benefit would be received much later. Hence, the question that should be asked is: “Is cheaper fuel really the objective, or has a convenient justification been found for a policy serving other purposes?”

Europe and the American Reversal

Europe’s record should not be spared scrutiny. Russian suppliers are still being supported through EU purchases. Nevertheless, Russia’s share of EU gas imports was reduced from 45% in 2021 to 13% in 2025; its oil share fell from 27% to below 3%. A phased Russian-gas import ban was adopted in January 2026, with transition periods for existing contracts. ^[4]

These figures should be understood as import shares, rather than expenditure, and the EU should not be confused with Europe as a whole. Yet the direction is unmistakable. Substantial inherited dependence has been reduced, whilst a new opening is being created by Washington.

Europe’s unfinished withdrawal should be completed. It should not be used to excuse an American reversal. However, it should be stated that a number of European countries had pivoted to gas supplies from Qatar, which pass through the Strait of Hormuz. It is thus interesting to see whether this delays the EU’s complete exit from the Russian gas market.

Additionally, Western pressure on India and China over Russian oil purchases is undermined. Penalties can still be imposed, but on what consistent principle should commercial sacrifices be demanded when trade is being reopened by Washington itself? That contradiction can readily be invoked by both governments. No change in their behaviour has thereby been established. Nevertheless, collective pressure on Moscow’s revenues may be weakened far beyond the value of these particular shipments.

The Graham Act and the Waiver

The Graham Act was signed by Trump in September, having been named in honour of Senator Lindsey Graham, whose sudden death in July had followed a visit to Ukraine. Graham championed stronger sanctions against Russia as a means of forcing an end to the invasion. The legislation was thus intended to preserve an important part of his legacy. By signing it and then waiving its central measures less than a month later, the president whom Graham had so often supported dishonoured that legacy. ^[5]

Yet on 16 October, section 115 was invoked to waive major sanctions and tariffs. According to Trump’s order, the required national-interest certification was submitted to Congress. The waivers remain until further executive action. The pressure intended by Congress has consequently been undermined through the discretion Congress itself provided, an act of institutional self-harm, further strengthening the executive at the legislature’s expense. The waiver cannot automatically be described as unlawful when such authority was explicitly granted.^[6]

Nevertheless, a sharper challenge is presented by the separate 2022 Biden-era Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act. Russian energy imports are prohibited, with conditions set for termination, including a Ukrainian-accepted agreement concerning Russian withdrawal and cessation of hostilities, consultation and congressional review. A legal explanation is required for any claim that these requirements can be bypassed through a temporary diesel licence. The statutory question is not settled merely because administrative permission has been granted.^[7]

South Korea and the Wider Pattern

A further sequence can be observed in South Korea. On 30 March, a confirmed 27,000-tonne Russian naphtha shipment was reported by Reuters, with LG Chem identified as the buyer by a source. Naphtha is a petrochemical feedstock, not diesel. The purchase was made following US sanctions relief and disruption to Middle Eastern supplies. An immediate economic explanation was therefore available. ^[8]

Fuel was also being shipped in the opposite direction before Trump’s agreement was announced. More than 176,000 tonnes, predominantly diesel, were reportedly transported from South Korean ports to Russia during July and August, including aboard British- and EU-sanctioned tankers. ^[9] Seoul disputed the allegations, defended its compliance with sanctions and said that possible export-control violations were under examination.^[10]

By October, measures against Kyiv were being threatened after the transfer of two captured North Korean soldiers had been disclosed. Seoul said that confidentiality was necessary for their protection, yet Ukrainian officials denied the existence of such an agreement. Another $100 million in non-lethal assistance had also been pledged in July, hence a simple change of sides cannot fairly be inferred. ^[11]However, the support appears tokenistic.

Speculation about an earlier American arrangement was meanwhile encouraged by the voyage of the Minerva Zen, which had departed Russia in September and reached the United States shortly after Trump’s announcement. Its cargo, however, was subsequently identified as fertiliser rather than diesel. That voyage cannot therefore be used as evidence that the fuel agreement had been arranged beforehand, nor does it establish that Seoul had advance knowledge.^[12][13]

Nevertheless, a connection between commerce and accommodation deserves consideration. Once trade has been renewed, confrontation with Moscow may become more costly at home whilst Washington’s example may encourage accommodation. The earlier shipments demonstrate that commercial dealings were already under way. Prior knowledge of Trump’s agreement, or a political bargain explaining Seoul’s confrontation with Kyiv, has not been established. These possibilities may be investigated, but the missing connection cannot be supplied by chronology alone.

Is a Grudge at the Heart of Trump’s Motivation?

The Atlantic has cast some light on Trump’s thinking. According to three people close to the president, Trump believed that the Ukrainian refinery attacks were partly intended to damage Republicans in the midterms. Advisers also described an ambition for a December peace-signing spectacle. These accounts are anonymously sourced and should be treated accordingly. Nevertheless, a disturbing possibility is raised: Ukraine’s military strategy may be interpreted by Trump as a personal political attack. ^[14]

The possibility of a grudge must also be placed in its historical context. In the released 2019 call record, Zelenskyy was pressed by Trump to investigate Joe Biden and his son. A demand for politically useful investigations was documented. Whether resentment over that episode has influenced the diesel decision remains unresolved.^[15]

Potential Russian leverage should also be considered. Commercial opportunities in Moscow were being explored by Trump as early as 1987, when sites were sought for a possible hotel venture with the Soviet tourism agency.^[16] Decades later, the Trump Tower Moscow project was pursued in June 2016, during his presidential campaign. Assistance had been requested from the office of Putin’s spokesman, and Trump had been briefed on the project. Its duration and the Russian contacts were subsequently misrepresented to Congress by Michael Cohen.^[17]

Such dealings provide grounds for examining whether financial interests, concealed information or compromising material could have been used to exert influence. Concealment can create a vulnerability when information denied publicly is already known to a foreign government. That is a plausible mechanism of leverage, although neither the possession of blackmail material nor its use to secure this agreement has been established.

Electoral calculation, personal resentment, commercial interests and external leverage need not be mutually exclusive. The fuel-price explanation, meanwhile, appears inadequate to the scale of the concession: meaningful relief remains uncertain, whilst physical deliveries may arrive only after the midterms. Ultimately, enough can be judged from what is being done. Relief is being extended to Moscow, whilst pressure is being applied to Kyiv.

What May Follow

The immediate danger may be found in selective coercion, without any single declaration that Ukraine has been abandoned. Interceptor transfers, satellite access and intelligence could be made conditional for Ukrainian ‘restraint’, even where that restraint would be incompatible with an effective defence. Putting Ukraine in such a position would simply be an act of giving the impression of a choice when a decision has already been made.

Ultimately, through restrictions that can be imposed and removed, bargaining power is acquired over a country fighting for its survival.

That pressure has already been given tangible form. An order to restrict Ukraine’s Starshield satellite service was reported by Reuters to have originated inside the White House, whilst drone operations were said by Ukrainian officials to have been impaired. The sources did not identify who authorised the order, and a personal request by Trump was denied by a senior US official.^[18] Such uncertainty is itself damaging: military operations cannot reliably be planned around capabilities whose availability may be changed without warning.

The restoration of US early-warning intelligence was announced by Zelenskyy on 20 October. ^[19]Efforts to resume US-Russia-Ukraine talks by early November were subsequently reported by Reuters.^[20] Useful progress may yet be made, and damaging restrictions need not be permanent. Their reversal, however, does not remove the vulnerability exposed, damage done and lives lost by their imposition.

The decisive test is what is obtained in exchange. Are Russian concessions to be verified before sanctions are relaxed, or are Ukrainian concessions to be demanded before support is retained? Further waivers, unilateral restraint and negotiations excluding Kyiv would point towards the latter.

A different course would be demonstrated through clear demands towards Moscow, dependable defensive support and reliable commitments for Ukraine. Trump earned little confidence in such consistency. The uncertainty alone undermines Ukrainian planning, despite his earlier claim that overwhelming assistance would be supplied to Ukraine if Putin refused a deal.^[21] The political description of betrayal is warranted by this contrast between promised pressure on Russia and actual pressure on Ukraine.

Some restraint on the administration could follow Democratic gains in the midterms. Investigations and demands for disclosure could be strengthened, and impeachment could be pursued if a House majority judged the evidence sufficient. Removal would remain a separate hurdle, requiring two-thirds of senators present. Nor would a November victory transfer congressional control immediately: the new Congress takes office in January.[22]^[22]

Greater European responsibility for defence is now urgently required. Up to €150 billion in loans has been made available through the EU’s SAFE programme, whilst more independent satellite communications are being developed. OneWeb can provide complementary capacity, but cannot immediately replace Starlink. The first IRIS² launches are planned for 2029. Strategic independence is now critical, and it remains to be seen whether sufficient effort is demonstrated by the European community. ^[23][24][25]

One of the most troubling consequences is the encouragement of a shift towards the Kremlin by other nations. A sobering example: consultations with Russia on energy and wider economic cooperation are to be resumed by Slovakia on 26 October, through a commission suspended after the full-scale invasion.^[26] This policy cannot simply be attributed to Trump, given Slovakia’s existing course.

Nevertheless, Western pressure is made harder to sustain when renewed dealings with Moscow are legitimised by Washington itself. Other Russian-leaning nations in Europe, such as Bulgaria, can simply ask: “If the US can buy Russian diesel, why can’t we?”