Trump’s diesel deal opens a new rift with Europe over Ukraine

Russia has claimed it can supply even more diesel to the global market than the quantities agreed with United States President Donald Trump.

“By the end of the year, we could reach supply volumes of 3.5 million tonnes per month to global markets, just as was the case before the crisis,” Alexander Novak, Russian deputy prime minister, told the news programme Vesti on Monday.

President Vladimir Putin and Trump spoke on Friday on an agreement expected to bring 300,000 tonnes of diesel to global markets in October, half a million tonnes in November, and a million tonnes in December.

“Diesel Prices for Americans and, indeed, the World, will be COMING DOWN, IN RECORD NUMBERS, AND FAST!” Trump posted.

But experts are sceptical, and the move has opened a rift between the US and Europe on the Ukraine war.

Kostis Stambolis, executive director of the Institute of Energy for South-East Europe (IENE), described the US move as “purely political” and designed to put Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a corner.

Trump wants to signal that the US has “no problem with Russia”, unlike Europe, he said.

“Russia produces 5.8 million tonnes of diesel a month. Two million are likely to be available for export,” he added.

Europe has reacted to the diesel deal by backing Ukraine, whose war funding will be “front and centre” of this week’s European Council summit, European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen said on Sunday.

Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen on Monday called on Europeans to ban all tourist visas to Russians.

Stambolis believes Trump was leveraging European weakness to shift its position on Ukraine.

“About 30 European refineries have closed in the past 15 years for environmental reasons, because they have to pay to emit greenhouse gases,” he said, referring to Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme, “so now Europe is not self-sufficient in products”.

Trump is showing the Europeans “he doesn’t want to deal with Europe and to hell with them … This is opening the rift between the US and the EU further,” said Stambolis.

Ukraine says it has destroyed roughly half of Russia’s refining capacity, forcing Moscow to stop exporting lucrative petroleum products which help it to finance its war.

It has also bombed Russian tankers carrying crude oil to global markets.

Zelenskyy said the strategy was effective, and Trump’s deal, which would suspend sanctions on Russian oil products until April 2027, undermined it.

“Gifts to Putin will not lead to peace,” Zelenskyy said Saturday. “Any weakening of sanctions against Russia without a clear and lasting de-escalation agreement with Russia is an obvious sign of weakness.”

Although Trump announced an energy ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine on Sunday, leading Ukraine to suspend its attacks on refineries, Russian strikes pounded Kyiv’s energy grid and killed 12 people in Dnipropetrovsk.

“I do not think he has earned a respite,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said of Zelenskyy.

Europe supports Ukraine’s economic strategy against Russia’s war machine, but Trump has blamed it for raising petrol prices at the pump for Americans as he heads into Congressional midterm elections in early November.

“[Zelenskyy] wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers, with diesel fuel because Russia supplies a large portion of the diesel fuel throughout the world,” Trump told reporters in the White House after Zelenskyy’s reaction.

“I think it’s time for Ukraine to get a new president,” he said.

Politics over economics

Trump has followed a seemingly self-contradictory policy towards Russia.

He cut US military aid to Ukraine when he assumed power in January 2025, but agreed to sell Europe weapons to help Ukraine.

He had a public dispute with Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in February 2025, saying “You don’t have the cards,” but at the NATO summit this year said Zelenskyy had “done an amazing job” and “been very effective”.

Last month, Trump signed the Lindsey Graham Act, which would allow him to punish countries buying Russian oil. Eleven days later, he reversed policy.

“The moment the pendulum comes to one side, Trump tries to balance it with a completely different and opposite tool,” said Victoria Vdovychenko, an expert on European security at Cambridge University’s Centre for Geopolitics.

“In this way he sees how he controls the narrative, but also negotiations of any kind,” she told Al Jazeera. “So this pendulum will continue to prevail.”

How expensive is diesel in the US?

According to the US Energy Information Agency (EIA), average US diesel and petrol prices briefly spiked but ultimately changed little on account of the Ukraine war, yet they have risen a great deal on account of the US-Israel war on Iran.

US diesel was priced at $4.10 a gallon on the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, February 24, 2022. It had fallen to $3.81 on the eve of Trump’s Gulf war, February 28, 2026.

It has since risen by 78 percent, to $6.19 in early October.

It is a similar story for US regular unleaded gasoline, priced at $3.48 a gallon before the Russian invasion. It stood at $2.79 before Trump’s Gulf war, but has since risen by half, to $4.15 a gallon.

The US government has little room to reduce taxes, which constitute just 11 or 12 percent of retail price, so it can only manipulate prices through supply.

Will the diesel deal bring down prices?

“If the market knows that there will be much more diesel in the coming weeks, it factors this into today’s prices and discounts it now,” Stambolis told Al Jazeera.

But much more important in bringing down oil prices than the Trump-Putin deal will be an October 2 announcement by the G7 to release 100 million barrels of oil from strategic reserves, he said.

A remainder of 80 million barrels from a previous, 400-million-tonne release in March will also be released.

“This release will start happening in the next two weeks,” Stambolis said. “The world is 5 million barrels a day short of crude compared to before the Gulf war. It’s a very significant percentage on 100 million. All prices vary on this margin.”