How Donald Trump Completely Abandoned Ukraine This Week With Just 3 Moves
As Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted: “Putin is laughing”.
Donald Trump is on the cusp of tearing up the global order after taking his most extreme steps yet to align the US with Russia.
When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, the US emerged as one of the country’s strongest allies.
As the most powerful nation in Nato, America spent years helping Ukraine defend itself with funding and weaponry – even though it is not actually a member of the military alliance.
Years of careful diplomacy then went down the drain when Trump started his second term in the White House at the start of 2025.
The US president has flip-flopped between backing Ukraine and rolling out the red carpet (literally) for Putin while desperately pushing for any kind of peace deal.
Rather than acknowledging the fact that Russia started the war by launching an unprovoked invasion, Trump seems to side with whichever country is having more success on the battlefield.
That is, until this month, when the president abandoned any illusion of unity with his European allies and handed Putin his biggest win yet.
Here’s what you need to know.
What Is The Diesel Deal?
Trump worsened his rift with Ukraine last week when he unexpectedly announced a new diesel deal with Russia.
Putin is set to release millions of tons of Russian diesel to global and American markets in exchange for a temporary suspension of US sanctions.
It’s thought the president chose to break with years of united Western sanctions on Russia to try and win back American voters by attempting to bolster the economy before the US midterms.
US inflation is currently at 3.7%, but that is due to the Iran war – which Trump is started in February and is still struggling to end.
Trump marketed the move as a way to bring fuel prices down, though experts suspect will have a minimal impact on the cost of living.
But Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said it would only embolden Russian attacks.
A group of US senators and representatives from both the Republican and Democrat parties criticised Trump over it, saying it violates the existing laws which ban all energy imports from Russia.
What ‘Energy Ceasefire’?
Trump unilaterally declared an “energy ceasefire” between the two warring countries on Sunday.
That means neither Ukraine nor Russia were meant to target one another’s energy infrastructure, a war strategy both sides have deployed especially when it gets to the winter.
Neither side had agreed to it in advance, but Ukraine appeared willing to give it a go if Russia agreed.
Moscow responded by launching ferocious overnight missile strikes on six different energy sites across Ukraine.
Zelenskyy said Russia launched more than 39 ballistic missiles and more than 120 attack drones, killing six and leaving 600,000 without power.
When asked by reporters about Putin’s decision to ignore his ceasefire on Wednesday, Trump just said: “Ukraine struck many sites the day before.”
Last month, Trump lamented the decline of Russia’s oil industry and called on Ukraine to stop targeting its aggressor’s energy supplies. He did not say the same about Russia’s attacks on Ukraine.
Earlier this week, the Trump administration went further and threatened to stop sharing intelligence and stop European allies buying American weapons for Ukraine unless Kyiv stopped hitting Russian energy
What Happened To Sharing US Intelligence?
The US and Ukraine have a deal to share US intelligence which would give Kyiv advance notice of incoming Russian missiles.
But Zelenskyy said Ukraine “received no advance warning from our partners” ahead of Russia’s Tuesday attacks.
Ukrainian officials told CBS News that the US had blamed “bad weather” for the failure in its system – but Kyiv did not believe the excuse.
The system was allegedly working again on Wednesday, when Russia launched another wave of ballistic missiles.
Trump said on Tuesday that the US had not stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine, adding: “We help them, but we’re really helping them get to a final answer. We want the war ended.”
Ukraine also uses the satellite technology owned by SpaceX’s Elon Musk, Starshield, defensively, to hit launch sites in Russian-occupied Ukraine and for drone interceptors to defend Ukrainian positions. However, that stopped working this week, too.
Musk claims the US government is to blame. He wrote on X: “Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately Potus [president].
“Starlink is a commercial service owned and controlled by SpaceX. Usage of Starlink is limited to civilian or defensive activities and cannot be used for offensive military action, as doing so would be inappropriate for a commercial company.”
How Has Zelenskyy Responded?
The Ukrainian president told Piers Morgan’s Uncensored show that he feels betrayed by Trump.
Speaking from the UK, where he visited Andy Burnham and King Charles, he warned “people will die” because of the decision, warning the US that is “not the right side of history”.
Zelenskyy said: “Now Putin is laughing because... this is for him a simple victory.”
He also claimed the US and Musk’s SpaceX deliberately cut off Ukraine’ intelligence access.
The UK unveiled plans to accelerate defensive support to Ukraine ahead of winter, and offer £17 million for Ukraine to help restore the protective shelter at Chernobyl.
He said he is “very proud” that the British people had proven “one of the strongest partners in our history.”
Zelenskyy told The Financial Times that Ukraine would now resume strikes on Russian refineries, adding: “We’re done.”
What Did Trump say?
After Zelenskyy said the diesel deal was a “weak decision” from Trump, the US president said Ukraine “wants to make problems for the world”.
“He’d better damn well stop,” he said, before claiming Ukraine should “get a new leader who can make a deal”.
“We said, ‘you can do whatever you want to Russia, don’t hit the refineries’, because that’s a world problem that’s caused,” Trump continued.
“He could have made many deals and for some reason, he never does.”
FBI director Kash Patel shared a bizarre post on X which read: “From Russia, with love...”
What Did Elon Musk Say?
The richest man in the world repaired his rift with Trump last week when he accepted an award from the president.
But now he is blaming Trump for any issues with his satellites.
He wrote on X: “And so the slaughter continues … Time for Zelensky to go.”
He did not respond when the Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski criticised him by referencing Musk’s previous attack of him as a “little man”.
Writing on Musk’s X platform, Sikorski said: “Big man, are you playing politics with your products again? As your European customers, we are watching you.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/en...yr-zelenskyy_uk_6ad07d8ae4b08a0fe855e48b
