During his 2024 run for office, Trump put forward pledges to bring down consumer prices and reach a rapid resolution to the conflict in Ukraine. At the end of those two years, neither objective had been met.
Pursuing lower fuel costs before the midterm elections, Trump has encountered added obstacles in his push to broker a peace settlement in Ukraine. Relations between Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky had already come under pressure following the US move to lift sanctions on Russian diesel, and that tension deepened on Thursday when the Ukrainian leader stated he would not comply with the American request to halt strikes on Russian refineries.
Prospects for halting the conflict diminished after Putin chose not to accept the cease-fire terms Trump had put forward. The dispute with Zelensky, set against an ongoing armed conflict in Europe, has drawn renewed attention to questions about the administration's posture toward Russia and its progress — or lack thereof — in bringing the war to a close.
No documented concession from Russia accompanied the decision to lift diesel sanctions, and fuel prices at the pump have yet to reflect any relief from the policy shift. Data from the AAA put the national average for diesel fuel at roughly $6.32 per gallon on Thursday, up three cents from the $6.29 recorded seven days prior.
Those around the administration are thought to believe that anxiety over the cost of living will draw more voter attention than the conflict in Ukraine, and that Trump's alignment with Putin has grown familiar enough to most of the electorate that it no longer registers as a liability. The energy deal has since become a talking point on the campaign trail, with Trump invoking it as his party works to retain control of Congress before the November 3 election.
At a rally held in Syracuse, New York, Trump presented the arrangement as a demonstration that his administration had taken concrete steps toward bringing down fuel prices, telling the audience that Russia had agreed to deliver substantial quantities of oil and diesel — resources he characterised as basic necessities. In a separate line of argument, administration officials have put forward the position that building economic ties with Russia could help create conditions for ending the war in Ukraine, on the reasoning that showing the potential of a durable postwar relationship with the United States might give Putin and the harder-line figures around him grounds to weigh a negotiated peace.
The announcement of a Trump-Putin agreement drew objections from lawmakers across party lines, including voices within the Republican caucus. The move was widely described as the administration's clearest alignment yet with Russian interests — a characterisation that carried weight given how several Ukraine-support measures dating to the previous administration had stayed in place even as goodwill toward Putin featured repeatedly in official statements.
A Republican lawmaker from Iowa pointed to diesel prices as the underlying motivation. Hinson, running for a Senate seat, told debate viewers she saw no need for any arrangement with Russia to achieve the goal. A cross-party Senate group separately urged Trump to walk back his decision to relax diesel sanctions, characterising the move as a concession to an adversary.
Conservative Ukraine advocate Meaghan Mobbs, speaking by phone from Ukraine, described Trump's approach of offering Russia economic incentives as resembling an Obama-era policy, and added that Putin's near-immediate breach of the energy cease-fire Trump announced the previous weekend had put the president in an uncomfortable position. Mobbs and others assessed that the dispute was unlikely to register with voters whose attention remained fixed on economic conditions heading into the midterms.
Polling data place Trump's conciliatory stance toward Putin well outside the mainstream of US public opinion, a gap that extends into Republican ranks. A March survey conducted by the Pew Research Center placed the share of Americans holding an unfavorable opinion of Russia at 83 percent, a figure that matched the proportion of Republican respondents who expressed the same view.
A Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey conducted in July recorded that 42 percent of respondents viewed Russian territorial ambitions as a threat — a figure that had slipped from 50 percent two years prior and from 67 percent in the period immediately following the 2022 invasion. Bruce Stokes, a foreign policy and public opinion researcher at the German Marshall Fund, noted that public attention had moved elsewhere, with competing events drawing focus away from Ukraine. That backdrop has set the context for the recent deterioration in relations between the two presidents, which analysts describe as the most strained point in the US-Ukraine partnership since their televised Oval Office confrontation in February 2025.
Kyiv and allied governments pursued a range of steps to build rapport with the Trump administration, among them cultivating relationships with influential voices in the MAGA media space and negotiating an arrangement granting Washington a share of Ukraine's natural mineral wealth. At certain points, Trump's remarks and body language indicated some degree of respect for both Zelensky and the resolve Ukraine had shown.
As fuel costs ticked upward and midterm elections approached, attention within the administration turned toward the war's possible impact on energy prices — a pivot that came after Trump had publicly praised Zelensky in June, calling him courageous and saying he was fighting alongside capable men. A phone call between Vance and Zelensky on July 31 centred on how Russia's ongoing war has been affecting global markets, Zelensky's office reported.
Witkoff, Kushner, and Vance — all serving as envoys on the Ukraine conflict under the current administration — each conveyed to Zelensky a request that he hold off on targeting Russian oil refineries, according to a source with knowledge of those discussions. The source was granted anonymity to address the delicate diplomatic matters at hand.
On September 13, Trump stated that Zelensky needed to halt Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries, though trade data indicated that the bulk of the diesel supply shortfall at the time was tied to the conflict involving Iran, with the refinery attacks contributing as a secondary factor. Kyiv indicated a readiness to suspend drone and missile strikes on Russian refining facilities, provided Moscow brought a halt to its own targeting of Ukrainian power and energy infrastructure. No agreement came from Putin's side.
On Friday, a decision to lift restrictions on Russian diesel imports took effect under Trump's direction. Reports emerged over the course of the week that Ukrainian officials had raised concerns about a potential halt to both intelligence sharing and Starlink satellite connectivity for their armed forces, a situation that left Zelensky visibly at odds with Washington. American government representatives stated that no reduction in intelligence-sharing activity had taken place.
A cross-party bloc of senators called for a Pentagon probe into the disruptions, putting forward that demand on Thursday. In a Thursday interview, Zelensky stated that Ukraine had held off on striking refineries for three days at Trump's request, but that those operations were now back under way. Zelensky put forward the view that direct talks with Putin represent a flawed path, and separately took aim at what he characterised as undue admiration for leaders who have consolidated power over extended periods without stepping down.
Some Republican backers of Ukraine have voiced concern that Zelensky's actions on the battlefield could deepen the conflict's difficulties. Over the weekend, as tensions between Trump and Zelensky mounted, a number of people within Trump's circle who had reservations about the Ukrainian president reached out to Trump directly to voice those concerns, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Mobbs, who leads a charity delivering humanitarian assistance to Ukraine, expressed scepticism that Trump's public criticism of Zelensky would shift how Americans perceive the country. Mobbs — whose father, Keith Kellogg, held the role of Trump's Ukraine envoy the previous year — expressed uncertainty about what Zelensky stood to gain from applying greater pressure, and offered her view that such an approach would not end favourably, given what is understood about the president's psychology. Mobbs also assessed that Zelensky's stance retained the potential to influence Trump's position.
