US loudly claims trilateral peace talks "fruitful"; day after lifting Russian diesel sanctions, Russian forces level Zaporizhzhia apartment building

According to Al Jazeera, the Trump administration hosted a US-Ukraine-Europe trilateral meeting this week that a US envoy called "fruitful," and announced the lifting of export sanctions on Russian diesel. However, just one day after Trump announced the sanctions loosening, Russian missiles destroyed an apartment building in the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia, killing 20 civilians including 3 children, marking the third mass-casualty attack that week.

Ukrainian President Zelensky noted pointedly on social media: "Today, Russia thanked the United States for lifting diesel export sanctions by bombing a Zaporizhzhia residential building with five glide bombs." This is one of his harshest criticisms of the White House's decision.

According to Reuters citing local officials, the victims included a 6-year-old girl. Zaporizhzhia Oblast senior official Mykhailo Sehkin said Russia launched simultaneous attacks on multiple locations in the early hours of Saturday. The city, whose pre-war population exceeded 700,000, has long been a target of Russian bombing, and the offensive has noticeably intensified over the past several months.

Al Jazeera correspondent Audrey McCarthy, reporting from Kyiv, noted that daytime attacks are becoming increasingly common: earlier this week a glide bomb struck a bus stop, killing 30 people, and Kyiv has seen a growing number of jet-powered drones striking targets during the day. She stressed that these incidents highlight the dangerous situation of Ukrainian civilians.

According to Al Jazeera statistics, in just two days from Wednesday to Thursday, Russian attacks killed nearly 80 civilians, with the Zaporizhzhia strike becoming the third mass-casualty incident of the week.

Contradictory signals

US envoy Steve Witkoff said Friday that "fruitful discussions" at the meeting involved "potential ways to de-escalate and end the war with Russia before winter arrives, advancing efforts toward achieving lasting peace." According to Al Jazeera, Witkoff said participants included "the E3, the European Commission, Ukraine, and NATO," with topics covering energy resilience, food exports, security guarantees, and "longer-term defense arrangements for Ukraine and Europe to prevent future conflicts." He also mentioned that the meeting discussed "Ukraine's post-war reconstruction and economic prosperity, including EU accession."

But Trump's decision to lift Russian diesel export sanctions is directly tied to his administration's effort to address soaring fuel prices—the US conflict with Iran has already driven up US fuel prices significantly. Kyiv has long been pressing Washington to ratchet up pressure on Moscow to take negotiations seriously to end the four-and-a-half-year war, and sanctions are one of the core pillars of that pressure strategy. The actual scope of the sanctions lifting, whether conditions are attached, and whether it is linked to Russian battlefield behavior—Al Jazeera's reporting offered no clear explanation.

EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas responded sharply on Saturday. She wrote: "This is not the time to ease pressure on Russia, and Europe will not do so." She warned that lifting diesel sanctions on Russia would fuel the Kremlin's war machine against Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Trump criticized Ukraine's strikes on Russian refineries, claiming those actions had driven up global fuel prices; Kyiv, for its part, argued that both sides should halt all energy strikes entirely, given that Moscow continues striking Ukraine's energy infrastructure.

According to AFP, a Ukrainian official delegation that had visited Miami, Florida departed for home on Saturday, with presidential aide Dmytro Lytvyn disclosing the news.

Stalemate and escalation risks

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a gloomier characterization of the conflict on Thursday. He warned that the conflict has fallen into a dangerous "stalemate," and noted that a failure of negotiations would increase the risk of further escalation. "The other way a stalemate ends is through escalation," Rubio told reporters, explicitly warning of the risk that the conflict could spread to NATO neighbors.

This series of events has thrown into the spotlight the internal fissures in Washington's Russia policy: on one side, the blueprint for peace and energy security commitments outlined in diplomatic rhetoric; on the other, economic breathing room handed to Moscow under the pressure of battlefield realities. The coherence of sanctions as a pressure lever—a core demand long insisted upon by Kyiv and Brussels—is being eroded by US domestic fuel-price politics, while the costs are borne by civilians on the front lines.

According to Al Jazeera, the specific proposals put forward at the trilateral meeting and their actual binding force on both Russia and Ukraine remain unclear; meanwhile, the transmission chain from soaring fuel prices to sanctions loosening is currently supported mainly by US officials' accounts and lacks independent verification.