Trump Tells Zelenskyy to Stop Hitting Russian Diesel as U.S. Prices Hit Records
President Trump said Sunday that Ukrainian strikes on Russian diesel plants are driving a global shortage, that his administration has already told Volodymyr Zelenskyy to stop, and that the squeeze “isn’t done by the Middle East.”
Tommy Flynn
President Donald Trump used a stop at the Irish Open on Sunday to put a public marker on Ukraine’s campaign against Russian refineries.
“Mr. Zelenskyy has to do one thing: He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump told reporters at Trump International Golf Links in Doonbeg. “Let him go after targets — but not diesel fuel, because he’s causing a shortage of diesel.” He said his team had already spoken to the Ukrainian president. “There are plenty of other targets. Don’t hit diesel fuel. That’s hurting the world.”
He repeated the instruction later on Air Force One. Asked which war would end first, Iran or Ukraine, he said his “problem” with the Ukraine fight is that diesel “comes from Russia and the Russia plants are being hit by Ukraine.”
U.S. average diesel has been reported near or above $6 a gallon, an all-time high in several tallies, with AAA putting regular gasoline around $4.31 on Sept. 13. Trump insisted the spike is not a product of the Iran war or the choked Strait of Hormuz. “This isn’t done by the Middle East,” he said. “This is done by what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine.”
Kyiv has spent months flying long-range drones into Russian refining and distribution sites. The attacks have cut Russian fuel output and produced gasoline lines inside Russia. Ukraine calls the plants legitimate military targets and notes that Moscow has spent four years hitting Ukrainian power and heat. Trump’s Sunday comments put the White House on the other side of that argument, at least for diesel.
The statement lands in the same week Saudi Arabia shut its East-West pipeline after drones that Riyadh and Baghdad said were launched from Iraqi territory — a separate shock Trump has already tied, provisionally, to Iran. The two stories are easy to mash together on a cable panel. They are not the same supply cut. One is a Persian Gulf artery. The other is a Ukrainian interdiction campaign against Russian diesel that the president of the United States has now told Kyiv to halt.
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