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2 weeks ago
President Donald Tump has announced a deal to bring Russian diesel into the United States, a move welcomed by the Kremlin.
He's accused Ukraine of ignoring his calls to halt strikes on Russian refineries.
Energy costs have soared in response to the Iran war and polls indicate grim prospects for the Republican party in November's mid-term elections.
Ukraine insists it will only stop striking Russian refineries if Moscow ceases attacks on its energy facilities.
Kyiv's European allies say lifting sanctions on Russian diesel now will only help sustain Moscow's war effort.
With Washington and Europe diverging further on Ukraine, how long can European leaders continue their economic and military support for Kyiv?
And what lies ahead for Ukraine?
Presenter: Rishaad Salamat
Guests:
Lisa Yasko - Member of the Ukrainian Parliament, who sits on the Committee on Foreign Affairs and Inter-Parliamentary Cooperation. She's also the former head of the Ukrainian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
Andrey Kortunov - Russian affairs analyst and former Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council.
John Lough - Head of Foreign Policy at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre and a former NATO official who was the first Alliance representative permanently based in Moscow.
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#Ukraine #Russia #DonaldTrump #VolodymyrZelenskyy #RussiaUkraineWar #RussianDiesel #USRussiaRelations #UkraineWar #EuropeanUnion #NATO #InsideStory
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<br>Alright, I watched the whole thing. Here's my take.
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<br>Now, you might think a trade deal is a trade deal. Diesel's diesel. The truck doesn't care where it came from. It's the most natural assumption in the world. And it's a load of horseshit.
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<br>Here's the sequence, and it's the whole thing. Last month, Trump signs a sweeping sanctions law aimed at Russia's energy revenue. This month, after a phone call with Putin, he thanks Putin on social media and announces the United States is buying Russian diesel. The Treasury issues a general licence authorising the imports until April 7. Ukraine is not in the room for the call. Ukraine finds out from the announcement. The Ukrainian delegation in Miami cuts its trip short the next day. And then Trump, asked about it, says Ukraine should get a new leader.
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<br>Buddy. That's not a deal. That's a message. And the message is: the guy who's been saying the right things for four years is now the obstacle.
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<br>Now, here's the part the analysts are saying quietly, and the transcript lets it slip. The volume is nothing. Three hundred thousand tonnes sounds big until you run the maths — that's about 2.25 million barrels. The US exports roughly 1.5 million barrels of diesel a day. So the "immediate" shipment is about a day and a half of supply. One analyst called it "a nothing burger." Andre Kortunov, in the Moscow seat, said the same thing from the other end: about half a day's consumption, mostly psychological, no real economic impact. The diesel futures dropped five per cent on the news. That's the whole point. The trade isn't the trade. The signal is the trade.
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<br>And the signal is this: the sanctions regime is now negotiable by phone call. Not by Congress, not by the EU, not by the G7. By one man, with one call, thanking the other man on Truth Social. Kaja Kallas says it's not the time to ease pressure and Europe won't. Germany says it's keeping its sanctions. The UK says the same. So you've got the United States on one side, and every one of its allies on the other, and the only thing that changed is a phone call.
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<br>And the owners don't care about any of it. The diesel traders will make their money on the five per cent drop and the five per cent bounce. The refiners will sell whatever they can get out of the damaged plants. The midterms are three weeks away and the price at the pump is the only number that matters, so the deal is aimed at the pump and not at the war. Everybody in that conversation knows it. Lisa Yasko, in the Kyiv seat, is sitting in a city with explosions going off and half of it without power, and she said it plainly: you can't trade with the devil.
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<br>So the bottom line. This isn't a sanctions story. It's a signal story. One country told the world, on a Friday, that its commitments are renegotiable by whoever gets the president on the phone. That's not a deal. That's a precedent. And precedents don't stay in one country. Ask anybody who's ever relied on a promise from a guy who just broke one.
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<br>Check the stove. Keep the loop open. And the next time somebody tells you this deal is about the price of diesel, ask them why it happened on a Friday, after a phone call, three weeks before an election.
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<br>Ed's out. 🌹