A little over a week after President Donald Trump demanded that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil facilities, Kyiv has continued applying pressure. Trump’s order has landed with all the authority of a strongly worded suggestion from someone who surrendered his leverage.

Trump issued the demand during a state visit to Ireland, insisting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stop striking diesel fuel targets inside Russia. He presented Ukraine’s military actions as a cause of diesel shortages.

“Mr. Zelenskyy has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump said during a state visit to Ireland.

“Let him go after targets but not diesel fuel because he’s causing a shortage of diesel. This isn’t done by the Middle East; this is done by what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine.”

The demand was remarkably foolish. Russian energy has faced sanctions for years, while the recent rise in fuel prices is the direct result of Trump’s war in Iran, not Ukraine defending itself against Russia.

Trump then made the situation even more embarrassing by falsely claiming that Ukraine had agreed to halt the attacks. Ukraine mocked the clearly impotent president the next day rather than behaving as though his demand carried meaningful weight.

Trump helped create this display of weakness by cutting off aid to Ukraine and eliminating most of the leverage he once possessed. Now he is reduced to demanding, or more accurately begging, that Ukraine change how it fights Russia.

The basic problem with Trump’s position is obvious. If he truly wants the war to end, Russia is the problem, not the country defending itself in an existential struggle for survival.

Yet Trump has returned to the same demand, pressing Ukraine again to stop hitting Russian energy facilities. Ukraine, meanwhile, has kept up the pressure with its own domestic supply of drones, cruises, and ballistic missiles.

That domestic arsenal matters because Ukraine is no longer simply waiting for Trump to provide the long range weapons it needs. His decision to deny aid did not end Ukraine’s ability to strike Russian targets, but it did weaken his influence over Kyiv.

There is no realistic reason for Ukraine to agree to stop these attacks unless Russia reciprocates. The source makes clear that Russia will not do so, leaving Trump’s demand detached from the conditions Ukraine actually faces.

Trump appears determined to find someone else to blame for diesel prices that have escaped his control. Ukraine offers a convenient target for that blame campaign, even though the article identifies Trump’s war in Iran as the direct cause of the recent increase.

That effort also requires people to accept Trump’s unsupported claim that Ukraine agreed to stop the attacks. Ukraine’s continued pressure makes his boast look less like diplomacy and more like another declaration that reality promptly ignored.

The humiliation is not simply that Ukraine rejected Trump’s demand. It is that his attempt to dictate terms revealed how little power he retained after cutting off aid and denying Ukraine the weapons that could have given him leverage.

Ukraine has little reason to sacrifice an important part of its campaign merely to help Trump escape responsibility for rising diesel prices. Without Russian reciprocity, stopping the attacks would mean asking the defending country to limit itself while the aggressor offers nothing comparable.

Trump can continue pleading, issuing demands, and pretending agreements exist when they do not. Ukraine can continue making decisions based on its own fight for survival rather than the political discomfort of an American president searching desperately for someone else to blame.

No one is buying Trump’s attempt to pin the diesel crisis on Ukraine. More humiliating still, his complaints increasingly sound irrelevant to a country that has developed its own weapons, maintained its attacks, and learned that Trump’s bluster can simply be ignored.