President Trump’s deal to buy Russian diesel fuel, and his intense pressure on Ukraine to stop striking Russian oil refineries, could hand a powerful boost to Moscow in its economic war of attrition with Kyiv.
The diesel agreement, if it goes ahead, could send some $4 billion of American money into the Russian economy, energy experts said. A halt to refinery strikes, if Ukraine accedes to one, could be much more valuable to the Kremlin.
Ukraine is expected to get nothing in exchange as Mr. Trump enlists Russian help in his effort to bring down sky-high diesel prices, caused mostly by the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, before the midterm election early next month.
Moscow remains free to continue attacking Ukrainian ports, steel factories, warehouses, power plants and data centers, a campaign that is gradually pushing Ukraine’s economy toward a breaking point. Such attacks destroy nearly $10 billion in business assets each year, Ukraine’s economy minister has said.
At the same time, Mr. Trump is demanding that Kyiv abandon its most potent tool for depriving the Russian war machine of income. Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries, combined with those on other businesses, have cost Russia about 1 percent of its gross domestic product, President Vladimir V. Putin acknowledged this month.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has condemned Mr. Trump’s decision to buy Russian diesel, saying in a social media post on Friday that “Russia will ‘repay’ the diesel with further terror and perfidy.”
Mr. Trump, who lifted sanctions to allow Russia to sell the fuel to the United States, struck an economic deal with Mr. Putin even as Russian attacks have driven civilian casualties in Ukraine to what the United Nations called a “new horrifying level.”
More than 100 Ukrainian civilians were killed in the past week alone. Moscow is striking Ukraine with an ever growing arsenal of increasingly powerful and precise weapons, taking advantage of gaps in Ukrainian air defenses.
Mr. Zelensky said on Monday that Ukraine had refrained from attacks on Russian oil refineries overnight. But he has said that Ukraine will agree to an extended cease-fire only if Moscow stops attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure. There are fears of a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine this winter if Russia succeeds in its goal of taking down the Ukrainian power and water systems.
The diesel deal is another sign of Mr. Trump’s willingness to tip the scales toward Russia, the aggressor in the conflict. This time, he is offering the Kremlin assistance in an economic battle that could help decide the fate of the war, with both armies largely bogged down at the front.
Ukraine’s campaign against Russian oil infrastructure began in 2024, with strikes on oil depots and refineries. The effort at first had little effect. But as Ukraine expanded its fleet of attack drones and learned how to target critical components that are hard to repair, the effects increased.
Reported gasoline output is down by 20 percent compared with 2025 levels, and diesel production is estimated to have fallen by nearly 30 percent, the International Energy Agency said in a report last month. The Ukrainian attacks prompted Russia to impose restrictions on diesel exports that Moscow now says it will lift to sell fuel to the United States.
The energy agency added that Russia’s oil tax revenue from January to August was nearly 17 percent below the level of the same period in 2025.
Should Kyiv be forced to halt its refinery strikes, Russia’s advantage in the two countries’ contest to starve the other of money will only grow.
Nowhere is that imbalance clearer than in the near closure of Ukraine’s ports.
For months, Russia has attacked commercial ships sailing in and out of the ports in the southern region of Odesa, aiming to discourage them from calling there. The ports are a lifeline for Ukraine’s economy, accounting for 60 percent of the country’s total export volume. They are used to export grain from the country’s fertile farmland, a key source of revenue.
Because of the Russian attacks, traffic through the three Odesa ports was down nearly 95 percent in August and September, compared with the same period last year, according to port data obtained by The New York Times. In September, only 12 ships made it out of the ports, compared to 266 in the same month last year.
Ukraine has tried to redirect some of the traffic to its ports on the Danube River, which connects the country to Romania. Ships can travel down the river through Romania and back into the Black Sea, sailing off the coast of NATO countries toward Turkey. But the Danube ports can handle only about half of the cargo that normally moves through the Odesa ports.
And the Danube route is now under threat, too. Last week, drones struck three ships off the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria, sinking two and killing several crew members. All three vessels had carried Ukrainian grain in the past, according to Romanian authorities and port data.
Ukraine has accused Russia of carrying out the attacks, though Romania and Bulgaria have steered clear of assigning blame. Russia did not comment on the attacks.
The halt to Ukraine’s seaborne exports could have catastrophic consequences for the country’s economy, with effects across many sectors. Ukraine’s agriculture minister said this month that farmers were unable to export about 30 million tons of agricultural products, worth about $30 billion.
Russia has also suffered from Ukrainian strikes on its Black Sea ports, which have constrained its agricultural exports. But economists say the impact is not comparable because Russia has more export routes than Ukraine, including through the Baltic and Caspian Seas, which Ukrainian weapons cannot reach as easily.
In a sign of that imbalance, Russia became the world’s largest exporter of sunflower oil in the 2025-26 marketing year, overtaking Ukraine for the first time in two decades, according to estimates from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Russia appears to be following a methodical approach to dismantling Ukraine’s economic base, striking all kinds of assets that an economy needs to function, including export routes, factories and energy facilities.
The fate of Metinvest, Ukraine’s largest steel manufacturer, is a case in point.
Its factories, including two large steel plants in southeastern Ukraine, were already suffering from power outages caused by Russian strikes on the grid. Then came attacks on the ports, which blocked a key export route, and on the railways, which left its products stranded inside the country. Finally, strikes on the plants themselves forced them to shut down last month.
The collapse of Ukraine’s steel industry, which contributed more than 7 percent of Ukraine’s economic output last year, will have severe economic consequences, said Oleksandr Myronenko, Metinvest’s chief operating officer. The company is planning layoffs for administrative personnel, and towns that depend on steel plants will see their budgets shrink.
In September, for the first time in a century, not a single metric ton of steel was produced in Ukraine for one week.
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