President Donald Trump spent weeks demanding that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil refineries. He blamed those strikes for soaring diesel prices in the United States and insisted that they were interfering with his effort to end the war.

Now Ukraine has resumed pounding Russian refineries, producing scenes described as apocalyptic. Trump, however, has suddenly gone quiet about the attacks he recently treated as an urgent problem.

In September, Trump needed somewhere to direct public anger over politically disastrous fuel prices caused largely by his war in Iran. Ukraine became a convenient target, even though Russian oil supplies have been constrained since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Trump announced an agreement with Putin to import Russian diesel and temporarily lifted sanctions to facilitate the shipments. Yet even the most optimistic projections suggested the imported fuel would equal less than 10 days of diesel consumption in the United States.

The United States is already a net exporter of diesel, meaning a few Russian tankers were never expected to meaningfully change global prices. The arrangement looked more like political theater than a serious answer to the fuel problem Trump was blaming on Ukraine.

Even that limited agreement appears to be unraveling. Despite intense pressure from the Trump administration, American energy companies reportedly want nothing to do with the Russian diesel because they fear legal and reputational consequences.

Industry analysts have speculated that the fuel could instead wind up in Brazil. For now, the Russian diesel tankers are still searching for a place to unload their cargo while Trump’s advertised solution struggles to get anywhere.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy offered Trump another option. Both Ukraine and Russia could stop attacking each other’s energy infrastructure, creating a reciprocal arrangement rather than demanding restraint from only one side.

Trump was not interested in that proposal. He wanted Ukraine to stop hitting Russia even while Russian missiles and drones continued striking Ukrainian cities and power plants, killing civilians and leaving hundreds of thousands without electricity as winter approached.

Ukraine eventually suspended its refinery attacks for two weeks. According to The Wall Street Journal, diplomatic considerations motivated the pause, including efforts to resolve restrictions affecting Ukraine’s access to Elon Musk’s critically important Starlink satellite service.

Musk had unilaterally cut that access. The restriction added another complication for Ukraine while Trump continued publicly pressuring Zelenskyy’s government to halt attacks against Russian oil infrastructure.

Zelenskyy’s patience eventually ran out, and Ukraine resumed striking Russian refineries. Russia reacted furiously, but Trump has offered none of the urgency or public outrage that accompanied his earlier demands.

“Another figure close to the administration told the Kyiv Independent that much of the administration’s rhetoric around Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil infrastructure was aimed at a domestic audience, pointing out that the CIA was still supplying Ukraine with intelligence on Russian air defense dispositions that helped facilitate Ukraine’s deep-strike campaign,” The Kyiv Independent reported.

That account exposes the staggering contradiction at the center of Trump’s posture. While he publicly demanded that Ukraine stop attacking Russian refineries, American intelligence agencies were reportedly providing information that helped Ukraine conduct those attacks.

With Election Day arriving, Trump’s urgency vanished. Russian refineries are burning again, while the Russian diesel tankers promoted as part of his answer to fuel prices remain without an apparent destination.

Ukraine gave Putin’s war machine two weeks without refinery strikes, while Russia continued killing Ukrainian civilians. Trump, meanwhile, got the preelection talking point he wanted before apparently losing interest in enforcing his own demand.