Eight years of tough talk toward Moscow, soft landings for Putin, and a bill that keeps getting sent to Kyiv
Last Friday, Donald Trump got on the phone with Vladimir Putin. The call was reportedly supposed to be about a suspected plague case in Russia. Trump came off it with a fuel deal instead. Russia would ship more than 300,000 tons of diesel right away, 500,000 tons in November, a million more after that, and then another three million. Within hours, the Treasury Department issued a general license keeping U.S. sanctions off any Russian diesel loaded onto tankers as of that day. The license runs until April 2027.
“I want to thank President Putin,” Trump wrote.
Three weeks earlier, he had signed the toughest Russia sanctions law in years. Two days after the diesel deal, he announced that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an “energy ceasefire,” effective immediately. “Do not break it!” he warned. A senior Ukrainian official told the Kyiv Independent that Kyiv knew nothing about any such agreement. That same evening, Russia hit a power plant in Kharkiv.
You could write all of that off as one chaotic week. I don’t think you can. Go back eight years and the same thing keeps happening: Trump threatens Moscow, and Kyiv ends up paying.
