Trump is right to tell Zelenskyy to stop hitting Russian diesel

By Grant Colby · Reporting from Amarillo · September 14, 2026

When I ran my logistics firm, the diesel price wasn't a talking point for the cable news crowd; it was the heartbeat of my balance sheet.

The Ledger Doesn't Lie at the Pump

When I ran my logistics firm, the diesel price wasn't a talking point for the cable news crowd; it was the heartbeat of my balance sheet. If fuel spiked, my margins evaporated, and the families I employed felt it in their paychecks. That’s why, when I see the national average for diesel break $6 a gallon—hitting $8.37 in some spots according to GasBuddy—I don't see a geopolitical puzzle. I see a crisis.

President Donald Trump is treating this like the emergency it is. Speaking from his course in County Clare during the Irish Open, as reported by Ukrinform, Trump issued a direct order to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy: stop knocking out the diesel refineries in Russia. His logic is plainspoken and correct: "Let him go after targets, but not diesel fuel, because he's causing a shortage of diesel."

The reporting from the Kyiv Independent confirms the tension. While Ukraine continues to strike refineries in places like Krasnodar Krai and Tatarstan, Trump is drawing a line in the sand. He isn't telling Ukraine to stop fighting; he’s telling them to stop sabotaging the global fuel supply. For a man who spent his youth in the Carter-era malaise, watching the economy choke on energy scarcity, Trump’s instinct to protect the pump is the only one that matters.

The Myth of the Single Culprit

Now, the critics are already circling. A senior European official told Politico that this is all a play for the November 3 midterms, claiming the administration is seeking "scapegoats" for its own conflict with Iran. Their best argument is a factual one: the U.S. war against Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz—a vein that carries a fifth of the world's oil—and knocked out 20% of Middle Eastern refining capacity. They argue that blaming Ukraine for a price spike when the Middle East is a bonfire is "absurd."

From a distance, that looks like a winning point. But I’ve spent my life in the Corps of Cadets and on the flight line; I know that in a combat environment, you don't ignore a secondary leak just because the primary hull is breached. You plug every hole you can find.

The global energy market is a fragile web. When you combine the closure of the Hormuz strait with Ukrainian drones leveling Russian refineries—which have already pushed Russian oil output to a 17-year low—you get an "energy shock," as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent put it. It doesn't matter if Iran is the primary driver; if Ukraine is adding fuel to the fire, they are contributing to the pain of every American trucker and farmer. To suggest that we should just accept the Iranian disruption and let Ukraine destroy whatever else they want is the kind of ivory-tower thinking that bankrupts countries.

The Pattern of Strategic Pressure

This isn't a sudden whim; it's a methodology. We saw this same blueprint during the 2018 United States tariffs on China, where Trump used economic leverage to force a strategic shift in a partner's behavior. He understands that "partnership" in international politics is a transaction, not a friendship. If the cost of supporting Ukraine is the economic strangulation of Main Street, the transaction is no longer fair.

We have been here before. The mechanism at play is exactly what we saw during the 1973 oil crisis. Back then, geopolitical conflict in the Middle East triggered a supply shock that sent prices skyrocketing and left Americans idling in gas lines. The lesson of 1973 was that energy independence and supply stability are not "policy preferences"—they are national security imperatives. When the supply chain breaks, the domestic economy bleeds.

The current situation is a modern echo of that same instability. Whether it's the Russian invasion of Ukraine or the clash with Iran, the result is the same: the world is too dependent on volatile regions. By telling Zelenskyy to shift his targets, Trump is attempting to manage the scale of the disaster to prevent a total domestic collapse. He is doing what any competent logistics manager does: identifying the variable he can actually control and demanding it be fixed.

The Price of Admission

The Europeans can call it "absurd" all they want, but they aren't the ones balancing the books for a trucking fleet in Amarillo. The reality is that Ukraine's military operations are funded by American taxpayers. If those operations begin to actively harm the American economy by spiking fuel costs, the benefactor has every right to dictate the terms of the engagement.

Zelenskyy views these refineries as legitimate military targets, and in a vacuum, they are. But Ukraine is not operating in a vacuum; they are operating on a U.S. lease. Trump has made it clear: "Don't hit diesel fuel, because that's hurting the world."

Here is where this goes: Zelenskyy will either pivot his targeting strategy to avoid diesel infrastructure, or he will find the flow of U.S. military and financial aid beginning to tighten. Trump has never been one for subtle hints, and he isn't starting now. He will use the only leverage that works in this game to ensure that the American driver isn't paying the price for a war in Eastern Europe. If the choice is between a Russian refinery staying online and an American trucker going bust, the ledger says the refinery stays.

Trump is right to tell Zelenskyy to stop hitting Russian diesel

The Ledger Doesn't Lie at the Pump

The Myth of the Single Culprit

The Pattern of Strategic Pressure

The Price of Admission

Sources