“The United States should not provide Putin with a financial lifeline while Russia continues to kill Ukrainian civilians.” That was the opening shot from six senators on Sunday, October 11, two days after President Donald Trump announced on social media that he had struck a diesel deal with Vladimir Putin.
The Associated Press reported that lawmakers were caught off guard. Trump wrote that Russia would immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel, followed by 500,000 tons in November and 1 million tons soon after, with a further 3 million tons to come. Four Republicans signed the senators’ statement: Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Thom Tillis and John Curtis. The two Democrats were Jeanne Shaheen and Richard Blumenthal.
Their complaint was partly procedural. The administration, they said, had neither consulted Congress nor supplied the explanation the statute requires. Substantively, they pointed to the 2022 ban on Russian energy imports. Allowing the diesel in “runs directly counter to that law,” they wrote. Tillis went further on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” saying there was a legitimate case that the president would be breaking the law if the purchases went ahead.
A defence from the Republican side
Not every Republican was uncomfortable. Sen. John Barrasso said the president “is balancing and has to make tough decisions,” and called the deal one more point of leverage against Putin. He also urged Trump to enforce the sanctions law Congress passed last month.
Two days after the first statement, 12 senators from both parties, Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn among them, wrote to Trump directly. The deal, they said, would have “a negligible impact on fuel prices” and was “a gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our Allies.”
What it does to prices
On that point the numbers are not kind to the White House. Diesel averaged $6.35 a gallon on a Monday in late October, just under the record $6.53 set in September, according to the US Energy Information Administration, as reported by Defense News. Federal data show the steep rise began after US and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, not after Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries, which Trump has blamed.
Russia, Zelenskyy noted, accounts for 2.2% of global diesel supplies. Goldman Sachs estimated that the first two months of deliveries would trim wholesale prices on the US Gulf Coast by $1 to $2 a barrel, roughly 2 to 5 cents a gallon. CNBC put the first shipment at about 2% of a month’s US diesel demand. The International Energy Agency said easing Russia’s export ban was unlikely to change global supply materially, since Russia lacks the working refinery capacity.
The Kremlin appears to be the clearer winner. Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War and the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center said the arrangement hands Moscow deeper economic ties with Washington and a chance that US pressure will halt Ukraine’s strikes on its refineries. Zelenskyy, speaking to reporters at an EU summit in Brussels on October 16, put it bluntly: the deal “will never be enough to offset the impact of the Strait of Hormuz on global markets. But it will put more money straight into Putin’s pocket to fund this war.”
Sources
- Trump's Russian diesel deal benefits Moscow more than US consumers, experts say – Defense News
- Bipartisan group of senators calls on Trump to reverse course on Russian diesel plan – AP via PBS News
