U.S. official says Trump reached diesel-fuel deal with Putin after Zelensky ignored six requests to halt strikes on Russian refineries
A U.S. official told Axios that President Donald Trump reached an agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin on diesel fuel after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky ignored at least six U.S. requests to stop attacks on Russian oil refineries. The official said Trump wanted Ukraine to halt the strikes because they were pushing up fuel prices in the United States.
The official said Zelensky was misreading the situation and warned that continued attacks on refineries would erode the goodwill he had built with Trump over the previous six months. The strikes cause hardship for Russia, the official said, but also hurt the United States.
The official said Putin was striking Ukraine hard, but the U.S. believes he is ready to discuss ending the war. “We want to work on a new proposal that is good enough for him to make him stop,” the official said.
Zelensky had offered to stop the refinery attacks if Russia ended its attacks on Ukrainian power plants. Trump rejected that connection, the official told Axios.
