Trump’s Russia-Ukraine Energy Truce Has Already Run Out of Gas - Newsweek

Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that Donald Trump’s Russia-Ukraine energy truce never had the gas to get going in the first place.

Within days of the U.S. president’s Monday declaration that Moscow and Kyiv had agreed to stop attacking each other's energy infrastructure, Ukrainian drones struck one of Russia's largest oil refineries hard enough to all but completely halt its operations.

Thursday's attack damaged a crude distillation unit responsible for roughly 40 percent of the processing capacity at the 300,000-barrel-a-day Slavneft-YANOS refinery in Yaroslavl, northeast of Moscow. Another unit at the same plant was already undergoing repairs following an August drone strike. This refinery alone produced around 4 million tonnes of diesel in 2024.

You can hardly blame the Ukrainians. State energy firm Ukrenergo said the day before Kyiv’s drone assault on Yaroslavl, Russian attacks damaged energy infrastructure and caused outages across six Ukrainian regions.

Whatever Trump announced on Monday, neither side seemed particularly incentivized to listen. After all, why should they? Trump’s concern for Russian and Ukrainian energy facilities is rooted squarely in an American problem.

The president’s hasty declaration came days after average diesel prices climbed above $6 a gallon across the country as sorely needed oil and petroleum products struggle to make it out of the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb. Over the weekend, Trump claimed he’d told Volodymyr Zelensky to stop "knocking out diesel fuel" in Russia, arguing that Ukrainian strikes on refineries were contributing to a global shortage.

In reality, Zelensky had said Ukraine was prepared to stop only if Washington could ensure that Russia genuinely did the same. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called an energy moratorium a "very good idea," but Moscow attached its own demands, including protection for Russian seaborne energy exports and sanctions relief.

When none of those conditions was met, strikes began again. Shocker.

The latest episode of Trump’s commands falling on deaf ears comes hot on the heels of his envoys Kushner and Witkoff enjoying a tour of the Kremlin and Kyiv.

They spent more than three hours with Putin on September 5, on what was Witkoff's eighth trip to Moscow since Trump returned to office. The visit produced one modest result: Putin paused strikes on Kyiv for three days while Ukraine agreed not to hit Moscow. But there was no broader breakthrough.

Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov emerged from the talks saying Russia remained confident it could achieve its military objectives and again invoked the war's "root causes," saying they needed to be addressed ahead of any deal. Flattery, it seems, will not by itself change Putin’s appetite for waging war; only a material change in the stakes is likely to affect Moscow's calculations.

The tool to affect such change is now sitting on the desk of the Oval Office.

Congress on Wednesday passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, which received broad bipartisan support in the House and the Senate.

The bill targets Russian officials, banks, energy interests and Moscow's shadow tanker fleet, but more importantly gives Trump authority to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on major buyers of Russian oil and gas, potentially forcing countries such as China and India to choose between cheap Russian energy and access to the American market.

Trump's advisers have also recommended that the president sign it; all that remains is for Trump himself to put pen to paper, followed by measures to Moscow.

There’s very good reason to believe these new sanctions powers could put the squeeze on Putin.

Moscow’s own Finance Ministry says federal oil and gas revenues fell 16.7 percent year-on-year to 5 trillion rubles ($59 billion) between January and August, while Russia’s budget deficit in 2026 reached 5.8 trillion rubles—already more than 50 percent above the deficit originally planned for the entire year. Even as tensions over the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb drive oil prices higher, the Kremlin’s energy cash machine is hardly invulnerable.

Nor does the Graham bill force Trump into one enormous economic confrontation overnight. It gives him wide latitude to set, adjust and gradually increase tariffs of anywhere from zero to 100 percent on goods from major buyers of Russian oil and gas, sanctions on Moscow’s shadow fleet, and duties potentially reaching 500 percent on Russian goods.

The president also retains broad waiver authority to pause or revoke the measures should they at any time be deemed counter to America’s best interests. This means the White House can remain flexible in its application of pressure.

Trump has, on many occasions, threatened major economic punishment for Moscow, only to delay, dilute or altogether ditch his threats when the moment of truth arrived.

If Putin continues ignoring requests for restraint, the question is no longer what Trump can do, it is what he is actually willing to do.