A few days ago, Donald Trump announced an “energy ceasefire” between Russia and Ukraine in order to bring down the price of fuel in America: Russia has promised to supply 300,000 tons of diesel immediately, with 500,000 more in November, and a million after that.
A reasonable, well-informed person would likely conclude that this has something to do with the fact that Ukraine has spent the past year methodically striking Russian refineries — the single most effective thing it has done to degrade Moscow’s ability to fund the war. According to estimates anywhere between 20% and 50% of Russian refining capacity is currently offline, with Russia banning diesel exports earlier this year. The Kremlin was, by its own account, in its worst energy crisis since the 1990s.
Against this backdrop, the narrative the Trump Administration and its media mouthpieces have been pumping out for days is that with global diesel shortages and spiralling prices, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had to be restrained in order to save the global economy.
According to the Financial Times, CNN and the Kyiv Independent, the Administration warned it would suspend intelligence sharing and shut down PURL — the NATO mechanism through which European allies buy American weapons for Ukraine — unless Ukraine stops hitting Russian oil infrastructure. “They called all the top military officials with threats,” one Ukrainian official told the Kyiv Independent.
And they weren’t empty threats either.
On Tuesday night, Ukraine’s Starlink terminals started failing. SpaceX had imposed a speed cap on Starshield — the military-grade service — cutting connectivity whenever a terminal moves faster than about 100mph. What moves faster than 100mph and needs an internet connection? A Ukrainian long-range strike drone.
According to Zelensky’s defence technology adviser, Starlink is Ukraine’s most effective tool for intercepting incoming Russian jet-powered drones — and for the second time in a week, Ukraine received no advance warning of a Russian ballistic missile attack.
Elon Musk’s initial explanation was that Starlink “cannot be used for offensive military action, as doing so would be inappropriate for a commercial company,” later clarifying that any limits on speed or usage “are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS.” Service was partially restored on Wednesday. The speed cap remains.
“Effective immediately, there is an ENERGY CEASEFIRE,” Trump posted on Sunday. “It was news for me,” Zelensky told Axios. More importantly, it appears to have been news for Vladimir Putin: Russia struck Ukrainian energy infrastructure hours later, including a power plant.
Is this undermining of Ukraine’s war effort at precisely the moment it is making progress worth it? Let’s look at the facts.
The 300,000 metric tons Russia has promised to supply this month is 0.26% of global monthly demand. Even if Putin delivers the full million tons in December (which he won’t), we are talking about less than 1% of monthly diesel consumption.
The energy ceasefire isn’t about Ukraine, Zelensky or even Russia. It’s about deflecting blame for the disastrous impact of the Iran war on the global economy.
By most estimates, the hole in the diesel market sits somewhere in the region of 5.4 million tons a month — roughly what has been removed by the collapse of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.
The politics explain everything. Trump’s approval has collapsed to an average of around 36%, with Reuters/Ipsos recording an all-time low of 32%. More alarming for Republicans: his approval among his own voters has fallen from 82% to 73% in a single week. Republican approval of his handling of the economy is down 24 points since January. On cost of living, down 26.
Gas is near $4.50 a gallon across the US. Diesel is above $6, and in California it’s hit $8. Nate Silver’s generic ballot average has Democrats at +8.9 — wider than the 2018 blue wave that cost Trump the House. Voters trust Democrats over Republicans on gas prices by 40 to 27. Fox News, hardly a hostile source, has shifted twenty House races towards the Democrats in a single week, citing fuel and grocery prices, and notes that Kentucky, Ohio and Texas are in the top five states for diesel increases.
This is a cynical attempt to throw someone else to the electoral lions. It won’t work, of course, because everyone but the most hardcore Trump loyalists understands which war has caused all this. After all, the Ukraine war has gone on for nearly 5 years, while the fuel and fertiliser shortages have happened this year and seem to be directly correlated with the start of the war in Iran.
Trump and his allies knew the Iran war would be a problem come the mid-terms when they started it: Ted Cruz told us as much when we interviewed him in March:
“If [the Iran war] extends to November we’ve done something wildly wrong,” he said.
He was right on that, despite the fact that he was convinced it wouldn’t actually happen. In the end, the war has dragged on and is widely perceived to have been a costly mistake. That’s the real reason Trump is now trying to shift the blame onto Ukraine.
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