The Daily - The U.S. Tried to Choke Russia’s Energy Market. Then It Made a Diesel Deal.

President Trump has announced a deal in which the United States could buy billions of dollars’ worth of diesel fuel from Russia, stunning allies and lawmakers.

Duration: 33m
Broadcast on: 14 Oct 2026
Audio Format: other

President Trump announced a deal to purchase Russian diesel fuel and temporarily suspended sanctions in an effort to lower domestic fuel prices amid rising costs from the war in Iran and in anticipation of the upcoming midterms. This abrupt foreign policy shift stunned European allies and drew sharp criticism from Ukraine, which viewed the move as a weakening of Western leverage against Russia.

Today, Anton Troianovski, a global affairs correspondent for The New York Times, discusses what the deal reveals about the Trump administration’s strategy with Russia, and how much it could actually lower prices at the pump.

Guest: Anton Troianovski, a global affairs correspondent for The New York Times who writes about foreign policy, national security and America’s place in the world.

Background reading: Trump faces a new crisis over Ukraine following the Russian diesel deal.

Photo: Igor Grussak/picture alliance via Getty Images

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For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

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From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kitroweth. This is The Daily. After years of American sanctions on Russian oil and gas, President Trump has just announced a deal in which the United States would buy billions of dollars in diesel from Russia. Trump claimed the move would lower fuel prices, but it stunned U.S. allies and lawmakers in Washington who warned that the American government was handing Putin a lifeline. Today, my colleague Anton Troyanovsky explains what the deal reveals about Trump's changing strategy with Russia and how much it could actually help American consumers. It's Wednesday, October 14th. Anton, welcome back to The Daily. We love having you here. Good to be here. Thank you, Natalie. So, on Friday, we learned that the American government is now reversing years of U.S. policy and is going to be buying Russian diesel, which is something that the U.S. had not been doing because we were told that money could fund Russia's war machine. What have we learned that all this is in service of lowering gas prices at home? This news was received, I think, as a total shock around the world. Can you just start by saying how big of a deal this actually is? Yeah, absolutely. So, Friday's news was a really stunning reversal because it was the president saying we have agreed with Russia that the Russians will immediately supply 300,000 tons of diesel to U.S. and world markets, and even more after that, without even saying that this was part of some kind of broader deal to deescalate this war in Ukraine that's now gone on for four and a half years and killed hundreds of thousands of people. Okay. So, how did this happen, Anton, lay out for me how exactly we got here? Well, let's go all the way back to the 2024 election campaign. You remember, one of Trump's main campaign promises was to end the war in Ukraine. He said he was going to do it in 24 hours. That did not happen. That did not happen. But Trump's friend and now peace envoy, Steve Whitkov, started early on in February of 2025. Regularly, going to Russia, meeting with Putin, speaking to other Russian officials about trying to end the war. And one primary prong of the U.S. approach has been talking about business deals with Russia, basically making the argument that, look, if only this war was over, we could do all these great things together and our countries could make lots of money. Essentially, let's end this war and we can all profit off of that. Exactly. The problem was that didn't work. For Putin, economics matter, but he clearly didn't start this war in Ukraine to make more money. Right. What Putin cares about is territory. He wants more of the eastern Ukrainian region called the Donbas. What Putin cares about is the kind of control he'll be able to exercise over the rest of Ukraine after the war ends. And what he cares about are these big geopolitical issues of what does the future relationship between Russia and NATO look like, where our Western troops located in different parts

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President Trump has announced a deal in which the United States could buy billions of dollars’ worth of diesel fuel from Russia, stunning allies and lawmakers.