Trump has made a catastrophic miscalculation

0It is an understatement to say that Donald Trump has never seen eye to eye with Volodymyr Zelensky – Getty Images North America/Roberto SchmidtIt is an understatement to say that Donald Trump has never seen eye to eye with Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s wartime leader.

But the American president’s capricious decision to strike a deal with Russia to provide much-needed diesel supplies is a step too far. (His subsequent announcement that Russia and Ukraine have agreed to halt strikes on each other’s energy infrastructure has been met with a “news to me” by Zelensky.)

Trump’s primary aim is to reduce spiralling US energy costs before next month’s midterm elections. But his agreement with Vladimir Putin has been received with absolute dismay by other Western leaders, who are rightly incensed that, at a time when the Russian economy is struggling under the weight of sanctions, Trump has thrown the Kremlin a lifeline.

Russia will provide an initial 300,000 tons of diesel to American and global markets to ease current shortages, with a promise to provide another 1.5 million tons by the end of the year.

It goes without saying that this drives a coach and horses through the carefully framed economic sanctions the West has applied against Moscow since Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Trump’s deal, at the very least, means that, just as the Russian economy is struggling to cope with the economic fall-out caused by the sanctions, the Kremlin can look forward to having its finances replenished by this new and unexpected income stream.

Ordinary Ukrainians will pay for cheaper global diesel prices with their lives. And while Western leaders have lost no time denouncing Trump’s sell-out, they also need to understand that the American president’s motivation for bargaining with Putin is not solely his desire to ease pressure on domestic energy prices. It is yet another move in Trump’s long-standing vendetta against Zelensky – one that dates back to his first term in the White House, with Zelensky’s perfectly reasonable disinclination to investigate Joe Biden, Trump’s political rival for the presidency.

The bad blood between the two men simmered below the surface for years, and culminated in the infamous bust-up in the Oval Office in February last year.

Despite continuing – up to a point – to support Ukraine’s war effort, relations have remained strained, so much so that Trump has made repeated calls for Zelensky to stand down and make way for a new leader, one who would be more susceptible to Trump’s desire to end the Ukraine conflict by forcing Kyiv to surrender to Putin’s maximalist war demands.

Trump’s animosity towards Zelensky was very much in evidence in the recent comments he has made, in which he has blamed Zelensky’s insistence on continuing to target Russia’s oil infrastructure as the main cause of spiralling diesel prices, demanding that Ukraine “better damn well stop” its attacks if it wanted the West to maintain its support.

And, for good measure, he repeated his demand that the Ukrainians “get a new leader who can make a deal” – a reference to Washington’s stalled peace initiative.

Trump’s diesel plan with Putin, which arguably represents a far greater humiliation for Zelensky than last year’s Oval Office spat, is likely to do far more damage to Trump’s global prestige than it will Zelensky’s.

Apart from the very obvious point that Trump’s initiative with Putin constitutes a massive sell-out of the Ukrainian cause, it is ludicrous for the US leader to blame Zelensky for the diesel crisis, as the primary cause of the rising costs is Trump’s war against Iran, which has nothing to do with Ukraine.

It is also questionable whether, given that it is little more than three weeks until the Midterms, any additional diesel supplies Russia can provide will have a noticeable effect on global energy prices before Election Day. In which case, it will be Trump, not Zelensky, that American voters will ultimately blame for the sharp rise in their household bills.

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