Trump Blames Kyiv For Diesel, But The Barrels Went Missing In Hormuz

Follow The Barrels

Start with the timeline. Diesel cost less than $4 a gallon when the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, 2026. Within two months, it had jumped by nearly half, well before Russia banned diesel exports in July. It hit a record $6.53 in late September and still costs roughly 70% more than a year ago.

Then look at the volumes. The war choked off most traffic through Hormuz, the channel that normally carries about a fifth of the world’s oil, and the IEA says it has cost the market billions of barrels of exports.

Gulf crude has since found its way around the strait by pipeline and ship-to-ship transfer. Refined fuel has not. Fuel shipments through Hormuz are a fraction of pre-war levels, and the Gulf’s diesel exports have shrunk to about a quarter of normal.

Russia’s losses are real but smaller. Its diesel exports have sunk to a two-year low. Before the war, the Gulf and Russia together supplied almost 45% of the diesel traded by sea. The Gulf accounts for the bulk of what has gone missing.

The U.S. buys no Russian fuel and has exported more oil than it imports since 2021. Most of its imports come from Canada. The Northeast, with little refining of its own, leans on imported diesel and Gulf Coast fuel.

None of that protects the price at the pump. Diesel trades on a world market. When Europe and Asia bid up cargoes, U.S. refiners ship them abroad, and they have exported diesel at record levels this year. That is why the White House has floated a diesel export ban, and why its own energy and interior secretaries have resisted it. S&P Global warns a ban would force refiners to cut output and push gasoline prices up.

Friday’s Russian deal won’t move the needle much, either. The first shipment equals about half a day of American diesel demand.

Kyiv’s Share Of The Blame

To be fair, Ukraine’s campaign does bite. The IEA says Ukrainian drones successfully struck a Russian refinery every few days this year, pushing Russian refining to its lowest level in two decades and deepening the global diesel shortage. Kyiv’s drones add to the squeeze. They don’t drive it.

But the strongest rebuttal comes from the president himself. At the NATO summit on July 8, standing beside Zelensky, Trump said the strikes on Russian refineries could help end the war. And for months he has tied fuel prices to Iran, not Ukraine. In September, he told a Republican midterm convention in Dallas that “oil will be going down as soon as we win the war with Iran.”

That is the right diagnosis. Rachel Ziemba, a senior adjunct fellow at the Center for a New American Security, says the two wars are reinforcing each other in fuel markets, but Middle Eastern flows remain “far from normal.”

The Iran war was Washington’s choice. Blaming Kyiv for its consequences is a deflection, and so far it isn’t working. In an AP-NORC poll taken in late September, nearly two-thirds of Americans said higher prices are the result of Trump’s policies, and more than seven in ten disapproved of his handling of Iran.

I have spent time in both Ukraine and Russia. In Ukraine, the people I met generally regarded Zelensky as a breath of fresh air. I was in the country in 2019 when it became public that Trump had pressed him to announce an investigation of Joe Biden, then Trump’s likely opponent. Everyone knew the pressure was real. Zelensky said repeatedly that he did not want to get involved.

During that time I got to know Julia Mendel, his press secretary. She has since become one of his fiercest critics, traveling the world to urge an immediate end to the war. Last month Zelensky sanctioned her, accusing her of spreading Russian propaganda; she says he targets anyone who advocates for peace. She remains a friend. I think she is running on the fumes of a long war, as many Ukrainians are. They are tired.

But that is a debate for Ukrainians to settle at the ballot box, not for a president in Washington to settle in a phone call with Moscow. Oil and gas fund a large share of the Kremlin’s budget, and the military now consumes a record share of its spending. Every cargo licensed on Friday helps pay for the missiles falling on Ukrainian cities. On Saturday, Russian strikes killed at least 20 people in Ukraine, including three children.

Diesel will come down when fuel moves freely through Hormuz again, not when Ukraine stops defending itself. Until then, Americans will keep paying the world price for a war that began in the Persian Gulf. Pointing at Kyiv won’t change that. Licensing Russian diesel only adds to Moscow’s war chest while barely touching what farmers and truckers pay.