On the campaign trail in 2024, President Trump promised lower prices and a swift end to the war in Ukraine.
Two years on, neither has been accomplished. And in his scramble to ease fuel prices ahead of the midterm elections, Mr. Trump has wreaked further havoc in his efforts to make peace in Ukraine.
Mr. Trump’s relationship with President Volodymyr Zelensky, already strained after last week’s U.S. decision to lift sanctions on Russian diesel, hit new headwinds on Thursday when the Ukrainian leader declared he would not abide by the U.S. plea not to attack Russian refineries. And with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia refusing Mr. Trump’s demand for a cease-fire, an end to the war appeared to recede even further.
The spat with Mr. Zelensky and the escalating conflict have combined to create a new liability for the White House, highlighting Mr. Trump’s remarkable friendliness toward Russia and his inability to end Europe’s biggest war in generations.
Russia is not known to have made any concession in exchange for Mr. Trump’s decision to lift diesel sanctions, and the move has not yet eased the pain at the pump. The average U.S. diesel price was around $6.32 a gallon on Thursday, compared to $6.29 a week earlier, according to the AAA.
But the White House appears to be hoping that voters care more about Mr. Trump’s push to lower prices than about the fate of Ukraine, and that they are no longer surprised by Mr. Trump’s forgiving attitude toward Mr. Putin. The diesel deal has already become a talking point for Mr. Trump as he tries to help Republicans avoid losing control of Congress in the Nov. 3 elections.
At a recent rally in Syracuse, N.Y., Mr. Trump cited the deal as proof that he was working to bring down gas prices.
“Russia agreed to send us millions and millions of barrels of oil and its diesel,” he said. “That’s what we really need.”
Administration officials have argued that doing deals with Russia could pave the way for peace in Ukraine by showing Mr. Putin and the hard-liners around him that a strong, postwar relationship with the United States was possible.
But Democrats and even some Republicans reacted to Mr. Trump’s diesel deal with Mr. Putin with outrage. Many saw it as the starkest Russia-friendly move yet by an administration that, for all of Mr. Trump’s kind words toward Mr. Putin, kept in place many Biden-era policies in support of Ukraine.
“We need to lower diesel prices,” the Iowa G.O.P. Senate candidate Ashley Hinson said in a debate Tuesday, “but I don’t think we need to be making a deal with Russia to do it.”
This week, a bipartisan group of senators called on Mr. Trump to reverse his decision to ease the diesel sanctions, describing the deal as a “gift to our adversary.”
Meaghan Mobbs, a conservative pro-Ukraine activist, called Mr. Trump’s effort to provide economic incentives to Russia “a very Obama 2.0 policy” — a grave insult in Mr. Trump’s Washington, given President Barack Obama’s pariah status in the current administration.
Mr. Trump “has been embarrassed by Putin,” Ms. Mobbs said in a phone interview from Ukraine, referring to Russia’s almost immediate violation of the cease-fire on energy targets that Mr. Trump declared last weekend. “I don’t know of a bigger middle finger than that.”
Ms. Mobbs and others said it was unlikely that the spat would affect the midterms, given voters’ focus on economic issues. It is the war in Iran, not the war in Ukraine, that has soured Americans as they contend with rising fuel prices.
Still, Mr. Trump’s friendly attitude toward Mr. Putin puts him on the fringe of American public opinion, even among Republicans, polls show. The Pew Research Center found in March that 83 percent of Americans had an unfavorable view of Russia, as did 83 percent of Republicans.
But he could be right if he is betting that Russia has declined on voters’ lists of concerns. A poll in July by the Chicago Council for Global Affairs found that 42 percent of Americans viewed Russia’s territorial ambitions as a “critical threat,” down from 50 percent two years ago and 67 percent right after Russia’s invasion began in 2022.
“I think that the public isn’t focused on Ukraine,” said Bruce Stokes, an expert on foreign policy and public opinion at the German Marshall Fund think tank. “There’s just so much else going on.”
The spat between Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky over the past week has evolved into the most serious breakdown of the U.S.-Ukraine relationship since the two presidents’ public Oval Office argument in February 2025. Ukraine and its supporters worked hard to win over Mr. Trump, including by courting MAGA influencers and making a deal to give the United States a stake in Ukraine’s mineral reserves.
Mr. Trump at times seemed impressed by Mr. Zelensky and by Ukraine’s resolve. He praised him in June for being “courageous” and fighting with “great men.”
But over the summer, as fuel prices rose and the midterm elections approached, Mr. Trump and his administration grew increasingly concerned about the war’s impact on energy costs. Vice President JD Vance called Mr. Zelensky on July 31, when the two men “discussed the consequences of Russia’s war for global markets,” according to the Ukrainian president’s office.
In recent months, Mr. Trump’s main envoys for the Ukraine war, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, as well as Mr. Vance, have all asked Mr. Zelensky not to strike Russian oil refineries, according to a person familiar with those conversations. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
Mr. Trump declared on Sept. 13 that “Mr. Zelensky has to do one thing: He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia.”
Export statistics showed that most of the diesel supply crunch came as a result of the war on Iran, though the attacks on Russian oil refineries also played a role. Ukraine said it was willing to halt its refinery strikes if Russia halted its own attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Mr. Putin refused.
Mr. Trump suspended sanctions on Russian diesel anyway on Friday. Mr. Zelensky’s anger built this week amid suggestions by Ukrainian officials that the United States was stopping intelligence support and Starlink satellite internet service for the Ukrainian military.
U.S. officials have said intelligence sharing has not been cut back. On Thursday, a bipartisan group of senators demanded a Pentagon investigation into the disruptions.
Mr. Zelensky told The Financial Times in an interview published Thursday that Ukraine had paused refinery strikes for three days to comply with Mr. Trump’s request, but was now resuming them. He criticized Mr. Trump for making deals with Mr. Putin and for openly admiring authoritarian leaders who have clung to power.
How can Mr. Trump “be friends with him?” Mr. Zelensky added. “I think that it’s a mistake.”
Republican supporters of Ukraine now fear that Mr. Zelensky’s attacks could make matters worse. As the U.S. president stewed over Mr. Zelensky over the weekend, some of the Ukrainian president’s critics in Mr. Trump’s orbit called Mr. Trump to air those grievances, the person familiar with the matter said.
Ms. Mobbs, who runs a charity providing humanitarian aid to Ukraine, said she doubted that Mr. Trump’s attacks on Mr. Zelensky would sway how Americans viewed Ukraine. But Mr. Zelensky’s criticism, she added, could sway Mr. Trump.
“I don’t know what he believes he will get by ratcheting up the pressure,” said Ms. Mobbs, whose father, Keith Kellogg, served as Mr. Trump’s envoy to Ukraine last year. “It’s not going to end well, in my opinion, based on everything that we know about the president’s psychology.”
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