On October 9, Donald Trump announced that Russia would be allowed to sell millions of tonnes of diesel on world markets. The decision marked a sharp reversal of American policy, one that appeared to favour Moscow over Kyiv and its European allies. It also sat awkwardly beside a law Trump himself signed in September, which had promised new sanctions and tariffs on any country still buying Russian oil and gas. The timing could hardly have been worse.

A delegation of Ukrainian and European officials happened to be meeting Trump's envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, in Miami that same week, discussing proposals for a pre-winter de-escalation after four and a half years of war. The envoys reportedly hinted that sanctions relief was coming, but the formal announcement still caught the visiting delegation off guard. The talks collapsed without any agreement, ending a day earlier than scheduled. Measured purely in barrels, the deal is modest.

The volumes mentioned amount to just under six million barrels of diesel, roughly a day and a half of US demand, according to the US Energy Information Administration. Global diesel prices are unlikely to move much, especially since Russia's export shortfall stems largely from its own Kremlin-imposed ban, not from US sanctions. The real surge in diesel prices, analysts note, began with Trump's confrontation with Iran, not with Russia's output. What the deal may actually achieve is strategic rather than economic.