On Thursday, Volodymyr Zelensky was standing in northern Ukraine after one of the deadliest Russian bombardments of recent months, accusing Washington of pursuing the wrong conversation with Moscow. The United States, he argued, should be increasing the cost of Vladimir Putin’s war rather than discussing future economic projects with Russia while diplomacy remained stalled. By Saturday, the dispute had moved far beyond sanctions or energy policy: Donald Trump was publicly telling Ukraine that it might need a different president.
.jpg) |
| U.S. President Donald Trump meets Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at United Nations Headquarters in New York on September 22, 2026. Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok / Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public Domain. |
The escalation has exposed something deeper than another quarrel between Trump and Zelensky. Washington and Kyiv are no longer arguing only about how Ukraine should fight; they are increasingly divided over what is supposed to make Putin stop, when Russia should receive economic benefits, whether Ukrainian military pressure is helping or obstructing diplomacy and, now, whether Zelensky himself is the right person to negotiate whatever peace emerges.
Zelensky saw the economic opening before it happened
The timing matters because Zelensky’s warning came before the Trump-Putin agreement, not after it.
Speaking on October 8, he challenged the logic of U.S. discussions with Moscow over future commercial projects while Ukraine was still absorbing heavy Russian attacks. Reuters reported that at least 78 people had been killed and 215 wounded in Russian strikes over two days, while U.S. and Russian officials were separately exploring economic possibilities that included potential American involvement in Russian energy assets and the future of projects such as Nord Stream. Zelensky said Washington could not treat the war as a diplomatic stalemate and simultaneously build the foundations for future business with Moscow without weakening its own leverage.
His argument was principally about sequence. Kyiv has never claimed that Russia must remain economically isolated forever; its position is that normalization should follow a change in Russian behavior rather than precede it. If access to markets, sanctions relief and Western capital are among the things Putin wants, Ukrainian officials believe those benefits should be exchanged for measurable concessions — a ceasefire, a halt to attacks on energy infrastructure, a return to serious negotiations or a change in territorial demands.
Trump’s call with Putin the following day inverted that logic. Russia agreed to make more than 300,000 metric tons of diesel available immediately, with another 500,000 tons expected in November, 1 million tons later and potentially 3 million tons more depending on refinery capacity. Washington temporarily relaxed restrictions that had been designed to limit Russian energy revenues, while Putin stopped short of committing to an immediate restart of peace talks. Kremlin foreign-policy adviser Yuri Ushakov said Moscow would decide later when negotiations could resume and blamed Ukrainian strikes for undermining the atmosphere for them.
Zelensky’s reaction was unusually sharp but carefully framed. He called the move an “investment in a war that must be ended” and later told Axios the process had been “not fair and not honest,” saying Kyiv had been discussing peace with U.S. envoys at the same moment Washington was preparing an economic accommodation with Putin. Yet he stopped short of rejecting America as a mediator, a sign of the constraint at the heart of Ukraine’s position: Zelensky can quarrel with Trump, but Ukraine still relies heavily on the United States for intelligence, advanced weapons, diplomatic influence and any credible Western security architecture after the war.
The refinery dispute is really a fight over leverage
At the center of Trump’s anger is Ukraine’s campaign against Russian oil refineries, one of the most effective long-range operations Kyiv has developed during the war. Ukrainian drones have repeatedly struck refining facilities and fuel infrastructure deep inside Russia, causing production disruptions, contributing to domestic shortages and at times forcing Moscow to restrict exports. Zelensky has described those attacks as part of Ukraine’s answer to an expanding Russian air campaign against Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure.
To Kyiv, that makes the refineries legitimate strategic targets. Russian petroleum revenue helps finance the state, refined fuels support military logistics, and every disruption imposes costs on an opponent that retains a larger population, industrial base and conventional military. Ukraine cannot easily match Russia missile for missile or soldier for soldier, but it can make a long war more expensive by striking assets Moscow once assumed were safely beyond the front.
Trump sees an additional consequence. According to Axios, he and his envoys had asked Zelensky roughly half a dozen times to stop hitting Russian refineries because the attacks were worsening an already tight diesel market and feeding higher fuel costs in the United States. Zelensky offered a reciprocal arrangement: Kyiv would halt attacks on Russian energy facilities if Russia stopped attacking Ukrainian power plants and other energy infrastructure. The U.S. side, according to Axios, wanted Ukraine to stop the refinery campaign even without an equivalent commitment from Moscow.
That difference explains why a dispute over fuel has become so politically combustible. For Kyiv, the refinery campaign is one of the few tools available to weaken Russia’s capacity and raise the price of continuing the war. For Trump, the same campaign has consequences for American consumers, farmers and transportation costs at a moment when diesel prices are politically sensitive ahead of the November midterms. Energy analysts cited by AP have also questioned whether the additional Russian supply Trump announced will materially reduce U.S. prices, because the broader problem extends beyond Russian exports to constrained global refining capacity.
The argument therefore reaches far beyond targeting policy. It is about whether Ukraine should be expected to surrender military leverage because that leverage has economic consequences for its principal ally — and whether Washington believes Russia’s willingness to negotiate can be increased more effectively by pressure or by giving Moscow something to gain.
Trump’s new target is no longer a refinery — it is Zelensky’s presidency
Trump’s Saturday remarks changed the nature of that dispute. He had criticized Zelensky many times before, pressed him over negotiations and elections and accused him of prolonging the war. Saying openly that Ukraine should find another president, however, puts the political leadership of an allied country inside an American peace strategy in a way that is much harder to separate from the negotiations themselves.
The issue is particularly sensitive because Ukraine has not held a presidential election since 2019. Zelensky’s normal five-year term expired in 2024, but martial law imposed after Russia’s full-scale invasion prohibits national elections, while Ukraine’s constitutional framework keeps the incumbent president in office until a successor can lawfully take over. The practical problems are equally formidable: millions of Ukrainians are refugees or internally displaced, Russian forces occupy parts of the country and large numbers of eligible voters are serving in the military.
There is a genuine domestic debate about elections, and Zelensky is not universally immune from criticism. Former Defence Minister Mykhailo Fedorov publicly called for a wartime vote in August, but the proposal encountered substantial resistance. A Kyiv International Institute of Sociology poll cited by Reuters found that 57% of Ukrainians preferred elections only after the fighting ends, while Zelensky’s approval was still around 60%. He warned that attempting to campaign and vote under current conditions could deepen divisions at the moment the state most needs cohesion.
Trump therefore cannot simply “replace” Zelensky, nor does the United States possess any constitutional role in choosing Ukraine’s head of state. What Washington can do is alter the political environment in which Zelensky governs. If access to U.S. intelligence, weapons, postwar guarantees or diplomatic support becomes increasingly associated with a different approach to Moscow, Trump’s declaration creates pressure not through Ukrainian law but through Ukraine’s dependence on its most powerful partner.
It also carries an uncomfortable parallel with a longstanding Russian argument. Putin has repeatedly portrayed Zelensky as illegitimate because his original term expired without an election, despite the wartime legal prohibition on holding one. Moscow used its own September parliamentary election to sharpen that contrast, presenting Russia as maintaining electoral continuity while questioning the legitimacy of the Ukrainian leadership. Trump has not adopted the Kremlin’s entire legal case, but his call for a different president moves a subject Russia has long exploited into the center of Washington’s public debate over how the war should end.
What would another Ukrainian president actually be able to give Putin?
The logic behind Trump’s statement assumes that Zelensky’s personality or political choices are a major obstacle to peace and that another leader might be more willing to compromise. The difficulty is that the largest obstacles to an agreement are not uniquely Zelensky’s.
Russia continues to demand Ukrainian concessions involving four regions Moscow claims to have annexed, including territory Russian forces do not fully control. Ukraine, meanwhile, wants credible security guarantees before accepting any arrangement that freezes or alters the battlefield map, fearing that a weak ceasefire could simply give Russia time to rebuild and attack again. Putin did not abandon those positions during his friendly call with Trump, and the Kremlin gave no indication afterward that the diesel agreement had produced a substantive territorial compromise.
A future Ukrainian president could negotiate differently, use a less confrontational tone with Washington or make concessions Zelensky refuses to make. But that leader would still face a war-weary society that has suffered years of Russian attacks, a military that has paid an enormous price to hold territory and a constitutional system in which permanent territorial concessions would carry profound political and legal consequences. Any settlement that appeared to exchange occupied Ukrainian land for uncertain promises would confront opposition far beyond one man in the presidential office.
That is why Trump’s phrase — a leader “who can make a deal” — raises a question rather than answering one. A deal can mean many things. A ceasefire backed by durable American and European security guarantees, protection from another invasion and a plausible political arrangement for disputed territories could prove attractive to Ukrainians who have lived through more than four years of war. A settlement that requires Kyiv to give Moscow land it does not even currently occupy, while leaving Ukraine exposed to another attack, would be harder for almost any Ukrainian leader to sell.
Ukraine’s battlefield position adds urgency without making the choice simpler. Kyiv has shown it can still inflict damage and conduct successful counterattacks, but its cities are increasingly vulnerable to Russian missiles and drones because of shortages in air defence. Reuters reported this week that recent Ukrainian advances have coincided with serious difficulty protecting major urban areas, creating a grim asymmetry: Ukraine may improve its position along parts of the front while losing electricity, heating infrastructure and civilians to strikes far behind it.
Russia has weaknesses of its own. The war has lasted far longer than Moscow originally expected, Ukrainian strikes are reaching deeper into Russian territory and refinery attacks have turned an abstract foreign war into fuel shortages and business disruptions inside Russia. Yet Putin still retains more manpower, more missiles and a larger industrial base, and his government appears willing to absorb substantial costs rather than abandon its central territorial demands. That combination is one reason diplomacy repeatedly returns even when neither side believes the battlefield has exhausted its possibilities.
The first Russian response to sanctions relief was not a ceasefire
The events immediately after the diesel agreement gave Zelensky a powerful political argument. Russian strikes on Zaporizhzhia killed 20 people, including three children, and wounded at least 18, while attacks continued elsewhere in Ukraine. Zelensky linked the timing directly to the U.S. decision, arguing that easing pressure without receiving a Russian concession had sent Moscow the wrong signal.
Europe largely reacted from the other direction. Germany said it would maintain sanctions against Russia and continue working with European partners on further measures, underscoring a widening difference between Washington and governments that still believe Russia’s war economy should be squeezed rather than selectively reopened. Berlin’s position matters because Germany has become Ukraine’s largest European donor and because any long-term settlement will depend not only on American guarantees but on European money, weapons, reconstruction financing and eventual integration with the European Union.
Ukraine, meanwhile, has shown little sign that it intends to end the refinery campaign simply because Trump wants it to. The Financial Times reported that U.S. officials warned Kyiv that continued attacks could jeopardize intelligence sharing, although accounts differ over whether this was an explicit threat to cut cooperation. The significance lies less in the wording than in the fact that a wartime ally is now discussing intelligence access as leverage in a dispute over Ukrainian strikes on the country invading it.
That leverage is substantial, but not absolute. Ukraine has spent years building domestic long-range drone systems specifically to reduce its dependence on foreign permission for deep strikes. Washington can make those operations harder by withholding intelligence, munitions or diplomatic support; it cannot simply switch off a Ukrainian industrial capability that now exists outside the traditional Western weapons pipeline.
The danger is that the alliance begins working at cross-purposes. Kyiv could continue trying to destroy Russian refining capacity while Washington simultaneously helps Russian diesel return to global markets. European states could tighten sanctions while the United States creates exceptions. American diplomats could be trying to persuade Putin that cooperation has economic rewards while Ukrainian officials try to demonstrate that refusing peace will carry escalating costs. None of those positions is inherently impossible to reconcile, but together they make a coherent Western strategy increasingly difficult to identify.
Two theories of peace are now competing in public
What has emerged over the past three days is a clash between two theories of how wars end.
Zelensky’s theory is coercive. Russia will negotiate seriously when continuing the war costs more than compromising: sanctions should cut revenue, refinery attacks should damage the war economy, Western weapons should raise military losses and any Ukrainian restraint should be exchanged for Russian restraint. His fear is that relieving pressure first teaches Putin that endurance produces rewards.
Trump is increasingly testing a different model. His envoys have discussed postwar reconstruction, security guarantees, Europe’s future relationship with Russia and economic arrangements that could give Moscow a reason to choose settlement over indefinite conflict. In that approach, the prospect of commerce is not necessarily a reward handed over after peace; it can itself be used as a bargaining instrument to get there. Axios reported that Witkoff and Kushner are developing proposals covering Ukrainian reconstruction, the rebuilding of its military, its relationship with NATO, EU accession and a wider Europe-Russia security framework.
The diesel agreement is the first major test of whether that theory can produce something concrete. If Putin now accepts a reciprocal halt to attacks on energy infrastructure, returns seriously to negotiations or modifies territorial demands, Trump will be able to argue that economic engagement created leverage that sanctions alone had failed to produce. If Russian exports resume while the bombardment of Ukraine continues and Moscow gives up nothing comparable, the sequence will instead validate the warning Zelensky made before the deal was announced.
So far, the evidence is mixed at best for Washington’s experiment. Putin obtained a temporary opening for diesel sales, described his call with Trump in exceptionally warm terms and declined to commit to immediate negotiations. Russian strikes continued the following day. Trump then directed much of his frustration not at the Kremlin but at Zelensky, first over refinery attacks and then over whether he should continue leading Ukraine at all.
That does not mean Washington has switched sides, nor does it mean Trump has decided to accept Russia’s conditions wholesale. U.S. envoys were simultaneously spending hours in Miami with Ukrainian and European representatives working on security guarantees, territorial ideas and a broader framework for ending the war. The contradiction is that the United States is trying to design Ukraine’s future security architecture while its relationship with the man currently leading Ukraine is deteriorating at remarkable speed.
What happens next will tell more than the diesel agreement itself. If Trump can extract a Russian concession after giving Moscow limited sanctions relief, the quarrel with Zelensky may eventually be remembered as part of a brutal but functional negotiation. If no such concession appears, the pressure on Kyiv will look less like mediation and more like an attempt to make the weaker side accommodate a settlement the stronger side has not yet been required to earn.
That is why Trump’s call for a new Ukrainian president matters well beyond its immediate shock value. It introduces the possibility that Washington may now treat Ukraine’s leadership itself as one of the variables to be changed in pursuit of peace, alongside sanctions, territory and military aid. For Ukrainians, that turns an already painful question into a more fundamental one: not only what they may eventually have to concede to end the war, but how much influence their principal ally should have over who gets to make that decision on their behalf.
Three days ago, Zelensky was warning America not to build a future business relationship with Russia before Putin changed course. A day later, Trump reopened a piece of that economic relationship. By Saturday, he was suggesting that if Zelensky could not make the peace Trump wanted, perhaps Ukraine should find someone who could.
The argument is no longer simply over how to end the war. It is increasingly over who gets to decide what ending it is worth.
Sources
- Associated Press — Trump says Ukraine should get a new president as he blames Zelenskyy for U.S. diesel prices
- Reuters — Trump says Russia to supply diesel to U.S. and global markets
- Reuters — Zelenskiy says letting Russia sell diesel to U.S. is ‘investment in war’
- Reuters — Zelenskiy accuses U.S. of inaction as Russian strikes kill over 70 in two days
- Reuters — Russian attack on Ukrainian city kills 20, a day after Trump eases diesel sanctions on Moscow
- Reuters — Neither Putin nor Trump wanted to hang up first after ‘very friendly’ call
- Axios — U.S. official: Trump cut deal with Putin after Zelensky ignored his requests
- Axios — Zelensky tells Axios Trump’s diesel deal with Putin “not fair and not honest”
- Financial Times — U.S. warns Kyiv that strikes on Russia jeopardise intelligence-sharing
- Reuters — Wartime election would ‘destroy’ Ukraine, Zelenskiy says