Washington Has Switched Sides in the Oil War

Four days after Washington announced its energy ceasefire, a Ukrainian drone set fire to a refinery in Russia's Ryazan region. The country whose refinery was burning treated the fire as routine.

nothing particularly significant. — Vladimir Putin

The country that had brokered the ceasefire treated the same fire as an offense against the pump.

Well, I think that's a disgrace. — Donald Trump

Washington was the aggrieved party when a Russian refinery burned. Ukrainian drones had spent the year cutting Russian fuel at its source: by July they had knocked out roughly a quarter of Russia's refining capacity, forcing Moscow to ban diesel exports and import gasoline from India; Perm, the country's seventh-largest refinery, was forced into total shutdown, and Russian refining volumes fell to their lowest since 2002 ^[1][2]. Then the barrel: diesel futures — contracts that price fuel months ahead — climbed nearly 12% to $154.71 ^[1]. Then the gallon: $4.85 a gallon nationally by July ^[1], and over $8 in California by October ^[3]. The president has said plainly whom he blames for the price at the pump.

gas prices will retreat after the war ends — Donald Trump

The blame lands on the ally, not the adversary ^[4]. That is not where Washington started. In December 2025 it sanctioned Lukoil and Rosneft — the two firms behind half of Russia's crude exports — to hit the Russian state budget ^[5]. In April it reinstated full oil sanctions under a program called Economic Fury, an attempt to starve Moscow of energy revenue ^[6]. A year ago the tools were pointed at Russian oil. They have been turned around. The diesel deal: sanctions on Russian fuel eased so Moscow can ship 300,000 tons this month, scaling to a million tons monthly only after November ^[7]. The intelligence: Ukrainian officials say the advance strike warnings simply stopped for two nights after Washington pressed Kyiv to stop hitting refineries ^[8]. The throttle: SpaceX imposed speed limits on the Starshield terminals Ukraine's combat drones fly on — the military satellite system, separate from the civilian Starlink — and Musk has been explicit about who sets those limits.

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. — Elon Musk

The throttle, in other words, is a presidential lever ^[9]. There is a competing reading, and it deserves its room: that all of this is a down payment on a settlement rather than an election fix. The peace-proposal talks and the invitation for Putin to attend the G20 in Miami are set for December, and denuclearization talks with Russia and China opened this week ^[10][11]. The dates do the arguing. The fuel volumes ramp to a million tons a month only after November ^[7]; the talks wait for December. And the president's own account of the deal has run in both directions at once. One version sells it as fuel for the American and global marketplace ^[4]. He has also described it the other way.

This is a diesel deal, not for us. The fuel is going into the global market. It is not going to us. — Donald Trump

The ceasefire was announced on the Sunday inside that October 10–12 window, four days before the Thursday fire, and in those same days Moscow killed more than sixty Ukrainians, 33 of them at a bus stop in Kramatorsk ^[12][13]. Tehran has been reading the same clock: Washington has pledged no American strike on Iran before November 3, while Iranian attacks on Gulf shipping kept coming, 26 vessels in October alone, with Tehran saying openly that the disruptions are meant to keep oil prices elevated through the vote ^[14]. Which brings it back to Ryazan. The ceasefire lasted four days. California's diesel price set its record anyway, over $8 a gallon ^[3]. The White House has protected everything in the deal except the one thing the deal was for. The exit is already underway. Zelensky toured Brussels and NATO in search of a supply channel that does not run through Washington, and Britain pledged missiles and money for Chernobyl ^[15][9]. European governments rejected the US proposal to unfreeze Russian sovereign assets. The president has described the rupture in his own terms.

But I think I find Zelensky to be more difficult to deal with than Putin. — Donald Trump

Zelensky said it more simply.

It’s a pity that we are losing, we are losing a strong partner. — Volodymyr Zelenskyy

Washington spent one year making Russian oil harder to sell, and the next making it harder to stop. The people who had been doing the fighting were already walking the other way.