President Trump’s new diplomatic crisis over Ukraine first erupted at Steve Witkoff’s exclusive golf club outside Miami on Friday.
Senior Ukrainian and European officials had traveled to the club, Shell Bay, for talks with Mr. Trump’s peace envoys, Mr. Witkoff and Jared Kushner. They had planned to discuss updated proposals to end the war in Ukraine ahead of another trip to Russia by Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner.
But Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner soon made an announcement that stunned the visitors and much of the world when the news became public shortly thereafter. The United States, the Americans said, would suspend sanctions on Russian diesel fuel. The Americans added a firm request from Mr. Trump: that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil refineries.
One of the Ukrainians asked what they would get in return.
The Americans responded that the United States was doing a lot for Ukraine already, according to three people familiar with the meeting, and should not have to make a trade for Ukraine to stop its refinery attacks. The Americans then mentioned U.S. intelligence assistance, considered vital to the Ukrainian war effort.
Some in the room heard that as a veiled threat, according to two of the people. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, denied any suggestion of a threat to withhold such support. But the official also said that Mr. Trump had grown so angry with Ukraine that it was hard to say what he might do.
Now, the dispute has ballooned into the biggest crisis between Washington and Kyiv since the Oval Office blowup with Ukraine’s president last year. The future of U.S. support for Ukraine again appears to be hanging in the balance. The escalating back-and-forth showed how Mr. Trump’s efforts to bring down energy prices before next month’s midterm elections have threatened to destabilize the fragile Ukraine talks.
Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner are now indicating that they have put their expected trip to Russia on hold until President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine mends fences with Mr. Trump, two people familiar with the talks said.
To the Ukrainians and their European supporters, the attacks on Russia’s fuel refineries are Kyiv’s most effective way to respond to Russia’s bombardment of Ukraine’s energy grid. Ukraine is prepared to stop attacking energy infrastructure, Mr. Zelensky has said, if Russia does the same.
Russia has refused such a deal. Nevertheless, to Mr. Trump, Ukraine’s attacks are an affront to a U.S. administration that has continued to provide intelligence and some military support to Ukraine despite the American president’s harsh words about Mr. Zelensky. Diesel prices in particular have become a sore spot for Mr. Trump, causing farmers’ costs to spike just as harvest season arrives and the midterms are weeks away.
“He better damn well stop,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Saturday, referring to Mr. Zelensky and Ukraine’s attacks on Russian refineries, and ignoring Russia’s strikes on the Ukrainian energy grid. “He wants to make problems for the world. He wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers.”
Export statistics indicate that the increase in diesel and energy prices stems largely from Mr. Trump’s war with Iran, though Ukraine’s attacks on Russia have also played a role.
On Sunday, Mr. Trump said on social media that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an “ENERGY CEASEFIRE” with immediate effect. Neither side confirmed an agreement. A person familiar with his thinking said that Mr. Trump was referring to a cease-fire only on refineries in both countries — even though Ukraine’s refining capacity had been all but destroyed early in the war.
On Monday, European and Ukrainian leaders suggested that while they would be open to an energy cease-fire, they were skeptical that Russia would follow through on one. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, noted that Russia had attacked Ukrainian energy infrastructure Sunday night “just hours after” the announcement.
“We are ready for an energy cease-fire: We are ready for any mutual format, anything that is not one-sided,” Mr. Sybiha told reporters while entering a meeting of foreign affairs ministers in Luxembourg.
Six Hours of Talks
The meeting on Friday at Mr. Witkoff’s golf club lasted about six hours, two people familiar with it said. Much of the meeting involved brainstorming about what the future peace talks might require to work, and the focus was on the standard issues, according to several people. The issues included accession to the European Union for Ukraine, for instance, and the question of territorial control.
Mr. Witkoff stepped out at one point to join a call between Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, and Mr. Trump, according to one of the people, who was in the room for the meeting. In addition to Ukraine’s three-person negotiating team, the national security advisers to the leaders of Britain, Germany and France, as well as top officials from the European Union and NATO, joined the meeting.
But Mr. Trump’s diesel deal with Mr. Putin quickly overshadowed the rest of the talks. Mr. Zelensky on Friday called Mr. Trump’s deal with Mr. Putin to allow imports of Russian diesel fuel in order to lower prices a “weak decision.” As the dispute intensified, Mr. Trump on Saturday said Ukraine needed “a new president.”
European leaders, including France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, and the head of the E.U.’s executive arm, Ursula von der Leyen, issued statements of support for Mr. Zelensky. Members of Congress criticized the diesel deal as helping fund Russia’s war machine.
“The United States should not provide Putin with a financial lifeline while Russia continues to kill Ukrainian civilians,” a bipartisan group of six senators, including the Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and John Curtis of Utah, said in a statement on Sunday. “The administration must immediately reverse course.”
Björn Seibert, a senior E.U. official who attended Friday’s meeting in Florida, gave ambassadors from across the European Union’s 27 nations a briefing on the meeting on Sunday, according to one European official who was there and three diplomats briefed on the matter.
Both the official and two of the diplomats said that the Europeans in Florida were taken by surprise by the Trump administration’s diesel announcement. The official said the ambassadors were stunned by the announcement.
One major takeaway from Florida, Mr. Seibert told ambassadors, was that the Americans were engaging more with the Russians than they publicly acknowledge, the official and one of the diplomats said. No further details on those engagements were given during Mr. Seibert’s briefing, which lasted about 20 minutes, according to the official.
The Trump administration has argued that energy deals with Mr. Putin, in addition to lowering energy prices, could help pave the way for a settlement in Ukraine by showing the Kremlin that reintegration into the world economy was possible for Russia if it compromised in the war.
Marc Santora contributed reporting.
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