Trump aids Putin terror attacks on Ukraine by pledging to gut sanctions on Russian diesel

This weekend, President Donald Trump publicly surrendered U.S. honor and security interests to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

The U.S. president demanded that Ukraine “replace” President Volodymyr Zelensky with someone willing to make “a deal” with the Kremlin to (supposedly) end the war. Yet the “deal” that Trump envisions would not end Russia’s aggression but would reward it.

It would encourage the Kremlin’s unyielding demand that Kyiv surrender to Moscow’s overlordship. And it would fuel Putin’s war chest, never mind that he has been attacking NATO members with drones, and is helping Iran destroy U.S. bases and kill American troops in the Middle East.

In a Friday phone call with Putin, the president arranged to suspend U.S. sanctions on Russian exports of diesel in the (false) hope this will lower U.S. fuel prices before November midterms. Even more shocking, POTUS threatened to stop sharing U.S. intelligence with Kyiv, unless Ukraine halts attacks on Russian refineries that are meant to finally drive Putin to the bargaining table.

This all happened just as a Ukrainian negotiating team arrived in Miami to discuss with U.S. counterparts how to overcome Putin’s constant rejection of any ceasefire. The Ukrainians were ready to discuss a two-way ceasefire over attacks on energy infrastructure, but were totally blindsided.

Yet when Zelensky rejected the one-sided diesel deal, Trump went ballistic and called for his replacement, as if Ukraine were a banana republic whose president could be ousted overnight.

So much for the much hyped bipartisan legislation named after the late GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham that was supposed to tighten sanctions on Moscow in order to force Putin to accept a ceasefire. Trump’s negotiators had already been talking with Putin’s team about big Russian business deals (that would benefit Trump’s circle of donors and supporters, of course) while demanding zero concessions from Moscow.

Trump’s desperation to lower diesel prices before the midterms clearly supersedes any concerns about security, for U.S. bases, NATO allies, or Ukraine.

A limited amount of Russian diesel will have minimal affect on the price of diesel; the only way to bring oil prices down is to negotiate an end to Trump’s misbegotten Iran war. With his pressure on Ukraine to stop striking Russian refineries Trump has killed any prospect of a two-way energy ceasefire that would also halt Moscow’s destruction of civilian electricity grids and heating plants in Ukraine.

If Putin keeps getting freebies from his friend Donald, why make concessions?

Lifting sanctions on Russian diesel exports, as Zelensky noted, not only gives Putin “more money to inflict suffering on us” but “gives him the ability to fight even more.” To add to this insanity, on the same day POTUS encouraged Putin’s aggression, he also found time to berate the Norwegian Nobel committee for not awarding him his coveted peace prize in 2026.

Few Americans are aware of the new horrors Putin has visited on Ukrainian civilians since early September. Even fewer seem aware of the Kremlin’s tight alliance with Tehran, which gave Russia its first Shahed strike drones, the same drones Iran now uses to destroy U.S. bases and kill U.S. troops.

Putin has returned Iran’s favor by sharing upgraded Shahed technology; he is also helping the ayatollahs develop new supersonic missiles capable of striking U.S. warships in the Middle East theater.

To repeat, Trump’s gift to Putin will not only fund Putin’s war machine but will help Tehran kill more Americans, too.

I witnessed the beginning of Putin’s new blitz on Ukrainian civilians during a trip to Kyiv and Odesa last month and it has only gotten worse since then.

Learning lessons from its war on Ukraine, Russia now produces millions of drones and has upgraded Iran’s Shaheds with jet engines. Russia is also mass-producing cruise and ballistic missiles.

Trump facilitated Russia’s slaughter by ending almost all military aid to Ukraine and refusing to send Kyiv the Patriot interceptors that are the only weapons which destroy incoming ballistic missiles.

Yes, Patriots are in short supply since Trump wasted much of our arsenal in his failing war on Iran. Yet by stiffing Ukraine, the president is aiding a Russian terrorist who is helping Iran — the very country that POTUS has labeled “the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.” Untangle that bizarre contradiction, and you can reach only one conclusion: Trump is an open accessory to Russian terrorism that also threatens the United States.

Indeed, “Russian state terrorism” is the only adequate term to describe what Putin is raining down on Ukraine. In conversations with officials from Ukraine’s largest private electricity company, DTEK, I heard worries that attacks on the grid will cut off water supplies this winter and severely disrupt sewage systems.

Russia has consistently used terrorist methods since Moscow invaded its neighbor in 2022. I have witnessed shattered high rise apartment buildings, hospitals, schools, cathedrals, libraries, and markets and heard horror stories about destroyed energy infrastructure that left Ukrainians freezing last winter.

Yet Putin’s terror attacks this fall are dramatically worse than previous years, given Russian advances in weapons technology and production. And given Trump’s total second term toleration of Putin’s war crimes.

Last year, Russian strikes on cities occurred mostly at night, so Ukrainians could at least walk and work during the daytime. This year, strikes occur far more frequently and often in the daytime, meaning schools and many businesses can’t function because of the constant need to run to shelters.

I have kept the air alert notification app for Kyiv on my phone. It is designed so Ukrainians can punch in their city or town to get advance notice of imminent and critical air attacks. As I sit in Philadelphia, sometimes it dings every hour. Sometimes, in the evening, every 20 minutes.

When civilians rush to the shelters deep in Kyiv subway stations last week, they now have to descend and ascend endless stalled escalators, frozen due to Russian bombing of Kyiv’s electricity infrastructure. That means that the elderly and mothers with small kids are more likely to risk staying home.

In the city of Kherson, freed from Russian occupation, Russian soldiers across the Dnieper River play “human safari,” chasing desperate civilians on the street with drones that can now be targeted from longer distances. They then publish video of the kills. Russia is now attacking cities that weren’t previously targeted, just to give civilians the feeling there is nowhere to hide. On Putin’s birthday, a Russian cruise missile hit a five-story apartment building, killing 22 civilians (including five children) as they slept in the city of Pryluky.

Such attacks are not collateral damage; they are part of a strategy designed to break the will of the population. “This is the kind of ‘gift’ Putin gave himself for his birthday,” Zelensky said Wednesday. “The killing of children, the killing of people.”

About such killings, Trump says not a word.

In Kramatorsk, one of Ukraine’s “fortress cities” in Donbas that Russian troops have been unable to capture, the Kremlin strategy now is to make life unbearable. On Thursday, a guided Russian glide bomb targeted two buses in Kramatorsk during rush hour, incinerating 30 passengers.

Photos of the scorched bus made me recall the horrific Hamas bus bombings in Jerusalem I witnessed in the mid-1990s. Putin’s mentality is no different from that of fanatical Islamists who view civilian slaughter as a useful tool.

What is so shameful is that any patriotic president would be revulsed by such terrorist tactics. He or she would use whatever tools were available to force Putin to accept a ceasefire.

A few ways that Trump could exert pressure begin with tightening, not ripping up, sanctions against Russian oil exports as called for by the Graham Act. He could immediately green light joint U.S.-Ukrainian production of Patriot missiles, and in the meantime, encourage nervous allies to spare some of their stock with a promise of replacement from new U.S. production.

Trump could also demand that Elon Musk permit Kyiv to use Starlink connections over Russian territory so Ukraine can bring Russia to the table by more precisely targeting production sites of its drones and missiles — and its oil refineries.

I could go on, but as we know, Trump will never show Putin any backbone. The president decries Hamas but brags of his great relations with the global terrorist in the Kremlin. If this be not treason, then what is?

GOP legislators who fail to call Trump out are also complicit. For those Americans who truly oppose terrorism, the choice at the polls is clear.