While promoting his golf course and ignorantly flipping off the United Kingdom in Ireland last weekend, Donald Trump told Ukraine to stop attacking Russian oil refineries:
“Mr. Zelenskyy has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump said during an official visit to Ireland on Sunday.
“Let him go after targets but not diesel fuel because he’s causing a shortage of diesel. This isn’t done by the Middle East; this is done by what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine” [Sam Meredith, “Trump Urges Ukraine to Stop ‘Knocking Out’ Russian Oil Refineries as U.S. Diesel Hits Record,” CNBC, 2026.09.14].
Wow—seven years later, Trump still can’t get over the fact that the President of Ukraine stood up to his impeachable extortion. Or Trump’s just in the pocket of the foreign regime that paid for his son’s swanky wedding last May. Those are far more logical explanations of Trump’s anti-Ukraine statement than any scintilla of moral or factual clarity:
- Russia invaded Ukraine and continues to threaten Ukraine’s very existence. Ukraine’s bombing of assets that literally fuel the Russian war machine is an entirely justifiable act of self-defense.
- Donald Trump’s rampage in the Middle East is causing a far greater shock to global oil markets than Russia’s self-inflicted troubles. According to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, “The US–Iran war has caused the largest sustained oil price shock since the 1990 Gulf War“—i.e., a larger shock than occurred in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. According to King’s College London School of Security Studies senior lecturer Andreas Krieg, “The Iran war remains the larger systemic shock to global diesel availability…. Ukraine’s refinery campaign is an extremely important additional squeeze, but it operates on top of a much bigger disruption centred on the Gulf.” According to the International Energy Agency, the amount of diesel/gasoil not exported by the Gulf States compared to February pre-war levels was more than twice the amount not exported by Russia compared to its February exports. Trump could do much more to alleviate the global diesel shortage by stopping his own bombing of Iran rather than begging Ukraine to stop bombing Russia.
- Ending Ukraine’s campaign against Russian oil refineries wouldn’t make diesel or other petrofuel cheaper; Trump’s war on Iran would still inflate energy costs. According to IG Group chief market analyst Chris Beauchamp, “A cessation of Ukrainian attacks might bring the price down slightly and in the short term…. But with the main driver unresolved, that move would rapidly be reversed.”
- Even if Ukraine left Russia’s oil refineries untargeted and Russia could resume diesel exports, why would we or any other decent nation want to buy diesel from the bad guys? Imagine if President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had said in 1940, “Prime Minister Churchill, you need to stop bombing German factories. There’s a global shortage of cars, so we need to buy more Volkswagens from Hitler.”
- Ukraine wouldn’t have to defend itself if Russia would stop waging war. Donald Trump promised he would end this war on or before January 21, 2025. 602 days later, Trump has not followed through on his promise. So to whatever extent Ukraine’s self-defensive military operations may be throttling Russia’s and the world’s diesel supply, that shortage is the fault of Donald Trump and his failed diplomacy.
The United States of America should not be telling a democratic country that is fighting for its life against a totalitarian invader to pull its punches. The United States of America should be arming that brave ally and helping Ukraine drive the Russian invader out to bring the war to a swift end, not just to ease the global diesel shortage (which we could do more quickly by stopping our war on Iran) but also to live up to its ideals of freedom and democracy.