Trump's Animosity Toward Ukraine Rewards Putin: From the Oval Office Ambush to a Russian Diesel Deal

I don’t think the US owes Ukraine an open chequebook. Europe should carry most of the cost of a war on its own continent, and it now does. A President who pushed allies to pay more, demanded accountability for every weapon and pressed both sides toward a ceasefire would be doing his job.

Then there’s what this President has actually done. Over 20 months he has treated the country that was invaded as the problem, and the country that invaded it as a partner in waiting.

Not occasionally. Not by accident. Consistently.

Ask whom he blames

In February 2025 he said of the war, “you should have never started it,” to a country whose territory Russia had seized. The next day he called Volodymyr Zelensky “a Dictator without Elections” on Truth Social. On 28 February he told Zelensky in the Oval Office, “You don’t have the cards right now.” Within days the US had paused military aid and intelligence sharing. That same month the US voted at the UN General Assembly against a resolution condemning the invasion, on the same side as Russia, North Korea and Belarus.

Fast forward to this week. Asked whether buying Russian diesel puts Ukrainians at greater risk, the President said: “I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal.” He said Zelensky “could have settled this war many times” and “wants to make problems for the world.” A day earlier he had thanked Vladimir Putin.

Twenty months, and the blame still runs one way.

Ask who gets paid

On 9 October Treasury issued a licence letting Russia sell diesel to the US until April 2027, with the President announcing deliveries of more than 300,000 tons now and more to follow. It came three weeks after he signed the Lindsey Graham sanctions act, which Congress passed 86 to 11 in the Senate precisely to tighten the squeeze on Russian oil. Lawyers are already asking whether a licence can override the 2022 law that banned Russian oil imports.

Who collects the money? The Russian state, through its energy exports, which fund the missiles. Who was the deal meant to help? American truckers and farmers paying more than $6 a gallon for diesel because of a war with Iran that this administration started. That’s a real problem. Solving it with Putin’s fuel makes Ukraine pay for it. Zelensky called it “a weak decision of strong partners.” He was being polite.

The pattern isn’t new. Last November’s 28-point plan would have handed Russia all of Donetsk, capped Ukraine’s army, written a NATO ban into its constitution and invited Russia back into the G8. The President said Zelensky was “going to have to approve it.” Russia was asked to give up very little.

Ask what Americans see

Civilians are paying for the drift. The UN’s monitoring mission counted 2,222 Ukrainian civilians killed and 13,058 injured from January to August 2026, 55% more casualties than in the same months of 2025, itself the deadliest year since 2022. Congress hasn’t approved significant new aid since April 2024. The Kiel Institute found US aid allocations fell 99% in 2025 from the average of earlier years, while Europe raised its military aid by two-thirds.

Americans have noticed. Pew found in March that only 32% are confident in the President’s decisions on the war, and 83% view Russia unfavourably.

What I’ll grant him

The record isn’t one-sided, and I won’t pretend it is. The administration sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil in October 2025, shared intelligence for Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries, kept Patriot sales flowing through the NATO-funded PURL scheme and signed the Graham act. The President once called Russia “a paper tiger” and said Ukraine could win back its land. Those were real steps.

But each came with a waiver, a licence or a reversal close behind. The Lukoil sanctions have been softened by licence after licence. The sanctions act gives the President a national interest waiver for almost everything in it. The paper tiger is now a diesel supplier.

A strong country doesn’t make the victim apologise.