Trump tells Zelenskyy to stop striking Russia's diesel production
Speaking to reporters in Ireland, US President Donald Trump said Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries and diesel infrastructure were causing a global fuel shortage and that Volodymyr Zelenskyy had to stop hitting those targets. Trump blamed rising diesel prices on the fighting between Russia and Ukraine rather than the Middle East. The remarks came in a week when US diesel passed 6 dollars a gallon for the first time and the International Energy Agency documented a steep fall in diesel exports from the Gulf and Russia.
Geopolitics··Night
Trump's call from Ireland
Trump took questions from reporters on Sunday on the sidelines of the Irish Open, the golf tournament played at his Doonbeg course in the west of Ireland. Asked whether he had spoken with Zelenskyy after his recent conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin, he replied that the one thing Zelenskyy had to do was to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia; his side had spoken to Zelenskyy about it, there were plenty of other targets, and hitting diesel was hurting the world. Trump attributed the rise in the price of diesel to what is happening between Russia and Ukraine rather than to the Middle East. A wave of long-range Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refineries in recent months had cut Russia's fuel production.[1], [2]
Diesel above 6 dollars a gallon and shrinking exports
The remarks came at the end of a week in which the average price of diesel in the United States passed 6 dollars a gallon, roughly 1.59 dollars a litre, for the first time on Friday, and fuel prices weigh on Americans preparing to vote in November's midterm elections. Ukraine has for months been targeting Russia's oil and gas industry with long-range strikes, prompting fuel rationing across Russia and leading Moscow to ban diesel exports in July, which removed supplies from an already tight global market. The global crunch also deepened after the war on Iran curtailed oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. According to a report the International Energy Agency (IEA) published on Friday, net exports of diesel and gasoil from the Gulf countries in August stood at just over a quarter of their level before the war on Iran began in February, and the agency wrote that disruptions to Russia's refining system and a near-halt to its product exports had compounded those losses. In February the combined net exports of diesel and gasoil from the Gulf and Russia made up almost 45 per cent of global seaborne trade.[2]
Kyiv's reasoning and the overnight refinery strikes
Kyiv says Russia's oil industry both funds and directly fuels Moscow's invasion, now more than four years old. The strikes were continuing as Trump spoke: the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU), the country's military intelligence agency, said its drones struck a key oil processing unit and the tank farm of the refinery at Slavyansk-on-Kuban in Russia's Krasnodar region overnight into Sunday, and Krasnodar authorities said the strike on an enterprise in the town damaged an oil pipeline. In Nizhnekamsk, a refinery cluster in Russia's Tatarstan region, local officials said a drone that slammed into a tree beside a parked car killed 2 people and wounded 14. Russia has in recent weeks stepped up its own air campaign against Ukraine with ballistic missiles and jet-powered drones, and civilians were killed and injured on both sides as the two countries exchanged large-scale drone strikes overnight.[2]
