President Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to stop striking Russian diesel refineries Sunday, because those attacks are driving fuel prices to record highs — and every penny of that spike comes out of working Americans' pockets.
AAA data shows the U.S. national diesel average just hit $6.06 per gallon — the highest in history. The previous record was $5.82 in June 2022, right after Russia invaded Ukraine. As recently as March, diesel sat below $4. Diesel doesn't just fill pickup trucks. It powers big-rigs, farm equipment, trains, and cargo ships. When diesel spikes, the cost of everything that moves by road, rail, or sea goes up with it. That means groceries, construction materials, clothing — all of it.
"Mr. Zelensky has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia," Trump told reporters at his Doonbeg golf club in Ireland. "Let him go after targets but not diesel fuel, because he's causing a shortage of diesel fuel."
Trump said he's spoken with Zelensky and emphasized there are "plenty of other targets." He added: "Don't hit diesel fuel, because that's hurting the world."
Ukraine's drone campaign has hammered Russian oil and gas infrastructure for months. Kyiv says the strikes cut off the revenue and fuel that power Moscow's war machine. The campaign has worked well enough to force fuel rationing inside Russia and push Moscow to ban diesel exports entirely. Iran and its proxies have simultaneously hit Gulf refineries, squeezing supply from another direction. The combined result: an 8 percent drop in global diesel supply, according to CNBC, while U.S. refineries are already running at 98 percent capacity.
Breitbart and the New York Post both covered Trump's comments straight. Neither dwelled on the obvious question the establishment press will raise — that telling Zelensky to ease off Russian refineries somehow serves Moscow. The Post noted that the price spike followed the invasion timeline but left the causal chain there. Breitbart's report focused heavily on the overnight drone exchanges and civilian casualties on both sides, burying the fuel-price angle deeper in the story. Yahoo News, meanwhile, ran a separate piece on Russia's state nuclear chief accusing Ukraine of attacking diesel fuel trucks near the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant — a claim that, whether accurate or not, underscores just how entangled diesel supply has become with the entire war's escalation dynamics.
The establishment line will be that Trump is doing Putin's bidding. The facts say otherwise. Ukraine's strategy of knocking out Russian refineries is rational from Kyiv's perspective — it degrades Moscow's war funding. But it also degrades the global fuel supply, and the people absorbing that cost aren't in Kyiv or Moscow. They're in Ohio, Texas, and Iowa. Every dollar added to a gallon of diesel is a tax on American commerce levied by a war Washington keeps funding but won't either win or end.
The question neither party wants to answer: how many more record prices do American families absorb before someone in Washington defines an exit?
