President Donald Trump on Sunday defended his decision to waive some sanctions on Russia, while again accusing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of not wanting to end the war. “My decision on Russia is a very simple one. I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform. He said great progress was being made in talks on the war, added that Russia was doing very little to help Iran compared with what it could be doing, and accused Zelenskyy of targeting Russian diesel refineries in the knowledge that the attacks hurt world diesel markets, including the United States.
Trump signed an executive order late on Friday waiving broad new sanctions mandated by the legislation named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham. He has also temporarily waived sanctions on Russian diesel, allowing large quantities to flow into global markets in a bid to lower fuel prices ahead of elections early next month. Polling shows his party heading for a likely defeat in the November 3 election, with many voters deeply upset by fuel costs, which have soared since the Iran war began in late February, AFP reported. Asked for more clarity on the statement, the White House did not immediately respond.
The domestic opposition predates the weekend and crosses party lines. Reuters reported earlier in the week that retiring Senator Thom Tillis said there was a legitimate case that the president was not following the law, that former Vice President Mike Pence called lifting sanctions on Russian oil a betrayal of Graham’s legacy and urged Trump to rescind the deal, and that Representative Don Bacon said propping up Putin’s war economy was morally wrong. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent defended the pact, telling Fox News the administration would follow through using existing legal authority and that the agreement was good for the American people and would bring prices down, while Senate Republican John Barrasso said the president was balancing tough decisions and focused on bringing costs down.
For fuel markets, the split matters because it sets the durability of the new Russian supply. A waiver defended as a negotiating instrument, and opposed in Congress on legal grounds, can be narrowed or reversed faster than a settled policy, which is one reason traders on Monday priced only a modest supply benefit from it.