Trump pushes "peace" while inking major Russian oil deal; Zelensky denounces it as "a gift to Putin"

When Russian President Putin spoke by phone with U.S. President Trump on Friday, he said that the immediate resumption of the three-way negotiation process had been "effectively" interrupted, citing Ukraine's drone strikes on Moscow and other cities on parliamentary election voting day; and right after the call, Trump announced that Russia had agreed to deliver over 300,000 tonnes of diesel to the United States and global markets.

The two events occurred one after another on the same day: the Kremlin used Kyiv's drone strikes as a pretext to freeze the Russia-Ukraine-U.S. three-way agenda led by the Trump administration; meanwhile, the White House struck an energy business deal with Russia that has been publicly opposed by Kyiv, Britain and multiple U.S. lawmakers — with the war far from over, this has sharpened external doubts about the credibility of Washington's so-called "peace-brokering" commitments.

According to Al Jazeera reports, Kremlin foreign policy aide Ushakov said after the call that Putin had originally intended to resume talks with Kyiv after the parliamentary elections, but the "Kyiv regime's" massive drone strikes on Moscow, other cities and polling stations — which also affected election organizers — had "effectively cut off the possibility of immediately resuming the negotiation process." Ushakov added: "As the president said, we will now assess when these talks can resume."

Trump, after the call, announced that Russia had agreed to supply over 300,000 tonnes of diesel to the United States and global markets. Ukrainian President Zelensky immediately slammed the agreement as "a gift to Putin," and said in a statement: "All that money is being used for a war against the people, against Ukraine, against all of us. I believe our team is being used as a smokescreen, which is of course unfair."

Zelensky also stressed that Ukraine is ready to hold three-way talks with the United States and Russia this month — but he also warned that Kyiv is being excluded from negotiations that truly shape the direction of the war.

U.S. Secretary of State Rubio acknowledged on Thursday that Russia's war in Ukraine is in a "dangerous stalemate" and reaffirmed that the United States will remain committed to reaching an agreement to end the war. However, this stance starkly contrasts with the diesel deal announced on the same day — which directly generates energy revenue for Russia — as Washington proclaims "ending the war" while doing large-volume energy business with one side of the war, while the country at the center, Ukraine, is even sidelined on the negotiating agenda.

The European response was restrained but clear in position. A British government spokesperson, responding to the U.S.-Russia diesel deal, said that Britain will continue to maintain pressure on Russia through "the toughest sanctions regime Britain has ever imposed." According to Al Jazeera reports, the deal was jointly opposed by bipartisan U.S. congressional members, Zelensky and European allies, but the specific names and number of opponents were not disclosed in the original reporting.

No public materials currently disclose the financial scale of the deal, its delivery timetable, or whether it touches on any current Russia-sanctions clauses. In a diplomacy that flies the slogan of "ending the war," striking a deal for hundreds of thousands of tonnes of energy with one side of the war — without explaining key terms to one's own Congress, allies and the domestic public — is itself an indictment of the Washington accountability chain.

As for Putin, as Ushakov said, attributing the stalled talks to Ukrainian drone strikes — the Ukrainian and Russian sides each cling to their own version regarding the scale and source of the strikes, and Al Jazeera did not provide any independent verification conclusion in the original reporting. What can be confirmed is: as Russia and the U.S. repeatedly tug at each other over the pace of talks, whether Ukraine, which is in the midst of the war, can be brought into the genuine decision-making process rather than being marginalized yet again is the main yardstick for measuring whether this "peace-brokering" is real peace-brokering or great-power profit-sharing.