Tim’s view
The contradictory tangle of energy policy actions taken by US President Donald Trump toward Russia over the weekend risks repeating mistakes that he and his allies often slammed his predecessor for.
On Friday, Trump announced the US would waive sanctions on Russian diesel exports until the spring and permit it to release 300,000 metric tons of diesel into the global market, before announcing an energy ceasefire between Moscow and Kyiv.
The diesel deal was quickly condemned by a bipartisan group of senators, who argued that the volume was too small to make a difference — equal to less than a day of US consumption — and extended a “financial lifeline” to Russian President Vladimir Putin. This, they said, contradicted both a 2022 US ban on Russian energy imports and the spirit of the new sanctions law Trump signed last month, which seeks to penalize countries like China and India for the very same kinds of purchases the president is now pursuing. The diesel relaxation, former State Department energy diplomat Geoff Pyatt told me, is “enough of a sweetheart deal to encourage [Russian Direct Investment Fund CEO Kirill] Dmitriev and Putin to keep fighting in hopes Trump will deliver Kyiv.”
As for the “ceasefire,” Russia seems to have violated it almost instantly. A Ukrainian official told me on Monday that Kyiv was temporarily holding off on further long-range drone strikes against Russian refineries while it assessed Moscow’s behavior and was waiting for a chance, potentially later this week, to clarify details of Trump’s proposal with US officials. Axios reported the deal could apply only to refineries, which would make little sense for Ukraine to participate in given that it has only one barely-functional refinery. Kyiv is more worried about the power sector, which a recently leaked Russian military planning document makes clear is still directly in Moscow’s sights.
Dangling a limited ceasefire deal that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy can’t accept sends the same message to the Kremlin as the diesel deal: Ukrainians are the problem in this war, and US resolve in support of Ukraine is barely paper-thin. The past few years have shown repeatedly that accommodating Putin pushes him away from the negotiating table, not toward it.
Trump and his energy officials have criticized Biden often and loudly for authorizing, in 2022, a record release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which they framed as an irresponsible stab at tamping down US fuel prices ahead of an election at the expense of long-term American security interests. They also criticized Biden’s decision in 2021 to relax sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in the interest of repairing relations with Moscow, which helped embolden Putin to undertake the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. With just three weeks until the midterms, Trump is clearly riled about diesel prices and the slow recovery of exports of refined products from the Persian Gulf. But it’s counterproductive to capitulate to Putin: In addition to the uncountable human toll, a longer war in Ukraine means more energy market distortion ahead.
Notable
- A new poll found that even if Trump managed a political feat like ending the Iran war or bringing down gasoline prices by $1 ahead of November’s midterms, a majority of voters would not be more likely to vote Republican.