[Correction: I misspoke. Russia formerly exported about 800,000, not 800 “million” barrels of diesel per day to Europe, before sanctions cut that off. I also added the NYT quote below before widely sending this post out.] As I post this, I am thinking this is not ONLY about US elections. Why? Trump et al have been claiming for a couple weeks that Russia wants to talk – though there is no public evidence. And Trump’s team are engaged in other, similar maneuvers:
- Offering Moscow to reopen the Nord Stream pipelines under ownership of a US firm. This is an old idea Trump et al had dropped by ca. April 2025, when it became obvious that enticing Putin with big deals and investments was not going to sway him to end his war in Ukraine. (This move has the German AfD excited, but they’re not significant players here.)
- Trump’s negotiators have also offered Moscow a that some western firm(s) could purchase Russia’s sanctioned Lukoil oil-and-gas infrastructure located mainly in Europe, which can no longer be used by Lukoil due to US sanctions,
- Plus, there is this unrealistic diesel deal, which Trump clearly hopes will make US voters think he is getting fuel prices down before November elections. I say “unrealistic” because, if Russia actually had significant extra diesel to sell, it would not have banned exports of diesel for many months while its refineries burn due to Ukrainian drone hits.
- And now (10Oct26 addition), there were earlier attempts, in September, also to bribe Putin to end the war. Here is the NY Times on what happened in NYC on the sidelines of the General Assembly opening:
“…, when the Trump administration opened the latest diplomatic track on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in late September, Ukrainian officials were startled by how far Mr. Kushner and Mr. Witkoff went in their offerings to Russia.
According to officials familiar with the discussions, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential diplomatic talks, the Americans put three lucrative economic incentives on the table to coax Moscow into a limited cease-fire, either on energy infrastructure or at sea.
“Washington floated releasing billions of Russian sovereign assets immobilized in the West. The money, the officials said, was viewed as an upfront incentive for partial truces, not a reward for their enactment. This revived a proposal from last year to release funds to Russia. Then, the suggestion was to release up to $100 billion.
“The Americans also revisited a plan to sell off parts of the Russian oil giant Lukoil in a multibillion-dollar deal that would go to a group of Middle Eastern investors, including some with business ties to U.S. negotiators.
“And Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner revived a U.S. proposal that would allow Belarus, the Kremlin’s ally and neighbor, to export potash, according to officials familiar with the talks. (Ref.: “Rebuking Ukraine Over Oil Strikes, Trump Says it Should ‘Get a New President'”, NY Times, 10Oct.26.)
So, this diesel deal with Putin, I assume, is not only to sway US voters in November mid-term elections. The Trump administration obviously has a broader effort underway (ref.), ostensibly to kick start negotiations to end the Ukraine war. This has also preceded US talks now starting in Miami with Ukraine (ref.).
The diesel deal undermines hard-won sanctions imposed by Europe, the USA and others of the G7.
However, for analytical completeness, I should add that it is not impossible that this is another round of the usual Trump pattern of offering Putin elaborate, even rather desperate, economic enticements, and when Putin rebukes the offers, Trump then goes on to escalates vs. Putin and Russia. Putin refusing such enticements, it has seemed, makes it feel easier to Trump, under the watch of global and national opinion, to then impose some new escalation vs. Russia.
You might accuse me of wishful thinking here. However, I am simply trying to be true to what patters I have seen in Trump’s negotiating and crisis-handling style – where Trump is clearly a complex and seldom transparent actor.
Trump has previously followed a pattern of using a threat, a “stick”, of upcoming escalations he communicates to Putin, and at the same time the “carrot” of various economic and business enticements (as I’ve described here: ref.). The idea has seemed to be, all in all, to see what he can get out of Putin with enticements and threats, often behind closed doors, before publicly going to a new level of sanctions or military efforts via Ukraine.
It is hard to tell if this is, once again, what all this is about, … which is exactly what Trump always wants, given his negotiating and conflict management style.
Nevertheless, using the diesel sanctions in this manner, whatever Trump’s game is, is a big blow to the hard won allied and Ukrainian efforts to cut off Russian oil, natural gas, LNG and diesel exports so as to undermine the Russian petrostate’s capacity to wage war.
In this video interview, recorded at about 9:00 AM CET on 10 October 2026, I comment briefly to Al Jazeera (English service, Doha) on the false promise and hyperbole Trump is using to portray his deal with Putin as if it will slash USA diesel prices – which are primarily high due to Hormuz.
Also I discuss the fact Russia simply cannot produce this much diesel as Ukraine has so severely damaged its refineries with drones and missiles that Russia had to stop exporting diesel months ago and still has domestic shortages nonetheless.
I said that Putin know how to pull Trump’s strings.
Actually, Trump knows full well that this deal won’t end high prices in the US. Rather it is pure hype to convince US voters that prices will soon fall and they should vote for his Republican candidates in the upcoming midterm elections in November, elections where his candidates are slated to do terribly according to polls.
In turn, he has sacrificed the struggle of the past years to sanction effectively Russian oil and diesel exports. He is undermining even his own accomplishments of the past two years vs. the Russian petrostate’s war against Ukraine and the in the war against the Iranian regime.
Best, Tom O’Donnell — I am available for talks and consults for your civil society group, business/industry organization, executive consults, or commissioned analyses. Write: tomod.com(at)gmail.com
