WASHINGTON — Seven years after trying to extort Ukraine into helping him in his own re-election campaign, President Donald Trump appears to be doing it again, pressuring Ukraine to stop fighting Russia’s bloody nightly attacks on civilians in order to help Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.
“I think it’s time for Ukraine to have a new president,” he told reporters Saturday after castigating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for attacking Russian oil infrastructure. “Zelensky could have resolved this war many times. Many, many times. And he chose not to.”
The pressure campaign, alongside a deal Trump struck with Russia to import diesel, is aimed at helping vulnerable Republicans whose position has been hurt by high fuel costs.
Yet the Hail Mary policy program, beyond morally fraught aid to a Russian dictator waging a war of conquest that has killed tens of thousands of civilians, also seems unlikely to significantly reduce fuel costs — a combination that has drawn condemnation from the very Republicans it purports to help.
“We need to lower diesel prices, but I don’t think we need to make a deal with Russia to do that,” Iowa Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is running in a tight Senate race in the typically red state, said during a debate Tuesday night. Former Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican Party candidate for Michigan Senate, also said he opposed the diesel deal.
Trump’s anti-Ukraine efforts now go beyond mere angry statements. Zelenskyy told NPR on Wednesday that his military leaders had been informed by Trump administration officials that the United States would stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine unless it stopped its attacks on Russian refineries.
And this week, the Starlink-based navigation system that Ukraine was using to shoot down Russian drones was suddenly disabled. On Wednesday afternoon, Elon Musk, whose SpaceX operates the Starlink satellites used by the “Starshield” defense system, placed the blame squarely on the Trump administration and on Trump personally.
“Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the US government. Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately by POTUS,” wrote Musk, a Trump ally who has donated more than a quarter of a billion dollars to help Republicans in the midterm elections.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson via Associated Press
The Trump White House did not respond to HuffPost’s questions about Trump’s preference for Russia’s Vladimir Putin, despite his continued strikes against Ukrainian apartment buildings and other civilian targets, including power plants.
His insistence that Ukraine take steps that would endanger its very existence as an independent nation with the stated goal of lowering diesel prices goes well beyond his 2019 demand that Zelensky investigate Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as a condition of receiving congressionally approved military aid. In 2019, while Russia was carrying out low-level attacks in the eastern Donbass region, Putin was still three years away from the full-scale assault and invasion he had launched in 2022.
“It’s the same use of government authority for purely political purposes,” said John Bolton, Trump’s first-term national security adviser who, like many Trump critics, was prosecuted by Trump’s Justice Department during his second term.
Robert Kagan, who served in the State Department under President Ronald Reagan and now works at the Brookings Institution, said Trump’s sudden decision to help Putin and harm Ukraine had ramifications far beyond this conflict.
“The United States has no foreign policy right now. The United States today is a predatory criminal enterprise,” Kagan said. “Our allies must quickly become aware of this reality. »
On several occasions in recent days, Trump has – wrongly – blamed Zelensky for the surge in diesel fuel prices. In reality, experts say, the price of diesel at nearly $7 a gallon is the result of Trump’s own war against Iran, which has driven up prices of oil, gasoline, diesel and other fuels around the world.
Despite this, and facing anger from truckers and farmers whose livelihoods in traditionally Republican states are under strain with midterm elections just weeks away, Trump demanded that Ukraine stop hitting Russian refineries and instead agree to a “deal” that would reward Putin in his nearly five-year war.
“He wants to create problems for the world. He wants to create problems for our farmers, our ranchers with, uh, diesel fuel, because Russia supplies a lot of the diesel fuel around the world,” Trump said of Zelensky on Saturday.
A separate deal announced by Trump in a social media post Friday would effectively lift sanctions on Russia to allow it to sell diesel fuel to the United States.
“Diesel prices for Americans and, indeed, the world, will FALL IN RECORD NUMBER AND RAPIDLY! Lower prices for Americans, especially for our great farmers, ranchers and truckers, are my highest priority,” Trump wrote.
The so-called deal, which on its face flies in the face of a 2022 law banning such imports, has been criticized by both members of Congress, including Republicans, as well as U.S. allies in Europe, calling it a betrayal of Ukraine and a callous embrace of a murderous dictator.
“The outcome of this decision is doubtful, while the risks are clear: legitimizing Moscow while its bombs continue to fall on Ukrainian cities, financing its war and weakening sanctions,” Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said Wednesday in a speech to her country’s Senate.
Regardless, oil industry experts said the deal allowing Russia to sell its diesel to the West would not bring significant relief to those who depend on it.
“Five cents off diesel,” said Dan Eberhart, owner of oilfield services company Canary LLC and a Republican donor. “Too little, too late.”
Matt Randolph, who also has decades of experience in the industry, said the 5 cents per gallon estimate was too generous.
“Zero,” he said. “It doesn’t add any diesel to the global market. Moving diesel from one place to another doesn’t change the price. Only increasing supply or decreasing demand does that.”
Trump’s 2019 extortion attempt was blocked when a whistleblower from his own administration filed a complaint. A congressional investigation by the Democratic-led House led to impeachment, but the Senate, controlled by the Republican Party, chose not to remove Trump from office.
Jason Crow, a Democratic congressman from Colorado who was one of the House prosecutors in the impeachment proceedings, said that Trump’s submission to Putin would not only harm Ukraine, but also America.
“Donald Trump’s pet war with Iran is why gas prices are near all-time highs. The president’s policies will do little to reduce costs but will do everything to cozy up to autocrats like Putin,” Crow said. “By easing sanctions against Russia, he prolongs the war and civilian suffering, and makes the American people less safe.”
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