On 10 October 2026, Donald Trump suspended sanctions on Russian diesel until April, announcing that fuel prices for Americans‘would fall rapidly’. The following day, he stated that‘Russia would like to reach an agreement but, for one reason or another, Zelensky does not want to do so’. The day after that, he called for Ukraine to elect ‘a new president’. This sequence is no coincidence, just like every move the tycoon makes. It is a communication and geopolitical strategy that is worth analysing in detail.

Diplomacy as performance

Trump isn’t conducting foreign policy; in fact, he never has. He’s constructing a narrative for the Midterms. The move on Russian diesel serves a specific purpose within the American communications landscape: to signal to Republican voters that the president is taking action on prices, that opposition to Russia is costing American households dearly, and that Zelensky – with his attacks on Russian refineries – is the problem, not the solution.

It is performative diplomacy in its purest form: a communicative act that does not describe reality but produces it. The diesel agreement will not bring about a structural reduction in US prices – the United States does not depend on Russian diesel in significant quantities, and the US market is supplied predominantly by domestic refineries and Canada. But the announcement produces a real political effect before anyone can verify its economic impact. It is the logic of the false problem: identifying a simple and visible cause for a complex phenomenon, offering a solution that seems intuitive, and garnering consensus before reality can disprove the promise.

The second act of this performance is the ousting of Zelensky. Publicly calling for a ‘new president’ for Ukraine serves to construct the narrative that the war continues because of Ukrainian intransigence, not Russian aggression. It is a causal rewriting of history that paves the way for a swift peace on Moscow’s terms, presented as rational rather than as capitulation.

The third step is the normalisation of Putin. Every time Trump refers to the Russian president as a reasonable interlocutor who‘would very much like to reach a solution’, he adds another brick to the construction of a narrative in which Russia is a party with whom one negotiates, not an aggressor that has invaded a sovereign country. This normalisation is gradual, methodical, and built on a communicative foundation that the mainstream media struggle to dismantle because it takes place through seemingly moderate statements. And this last point is nothing new for the US President. Putin’s normalisation drive has a very specific starting date: 15 August last year in Anchorage.

The false problem of the barrel

The energy argument is the weakest part of Trump’s case, and it is worth dismantling it with the figures. The problem of high fuel prices – which is structural in Europe and more cyclical in the United States – is not the price per barrel. It is refining capacity.

Lavoce.info makes this clear: from the pre-Covid period to the present day, Europe has closed plants accounting for 21 per cent of total capacity. Petrol refining margins in Europe in September 2026 exceeded $62 per barrel, whilst those for diesel reached almost $79. As Euronews explains:‘The main reason for the growing gap between crude oil and fuel prices in Europe is that it is increasingly a problem of refining and product supply, rather than simply a problem of crude oil supply.’

In this context, turning the taps on Russian oil back on does not shift the structural problem one millimetre. European refineries are already operating close to full capacity – capacity utilisation in European countries exceeds80 per cent. There is no scope to increase production any further. We need new refining capacity, we need investment in infrastructure, and we need regasification terminals.

The Nigerian paradox

The most instructive example for understanding where Europe is going wrong – and where Trump is exploiting a genuine contradiction – is that of Nigeria. For decades, Nigeria has been extracting crude oil, exporting it to Europe, and re-importing the refined fuel. Europe was Africa’s refinery. In 2024, the Dangote refinery in Lagos came on stream: with a capacity of 700,000 barrels a day, it is the largest on the African continent and, by September 2026, was meeting 71 per cent of Nigeria’s domestic petrol demand. In 2026, it became a supplier of fuel to Europe itself during the supply crisis.

The paradox is complete: whilst Europe was closing refineries in the name of the green transition, Nigeria was opening a huge one to end its dependence on Europe. A country that used to export crude oil and import fuel has now brought the entire supply chain in-house. Europe, which used to control that supply chain, has abandoned it. Today it imports refined products from Nigeria, India and the Middle East. The added value has gone elsewhere.

European hypocrisy and the case of India

There is, however, one factor that makes it difficult for Europe to respond to Trump with full credibility: the contradiction between the sanctions announced and the actual purchases. Sánchez’s Spain – a member of the same progressive camp that supports Zelensky – became Europe’s leading importer of Russian LNG in 2026, with purchases rising by 124 per cent in March compared with the previous month, totalling 355 million euros. In the first half of 2026, the EU imported almost 9.9 million tonnes of Russian LNG, a 16 per cent increase on the previous year. France, Belgium and Hungary follow. Italy has diversified its supplies and does not feature amongst the major buyers.

Added to this is the India-Russia loophole that has rendered the sanctions partially ineffective: India buys Russian crude oil at discounted prices, refines it, and resells the refined diesel to Europe at full price. As Josep Borrell has pointed out:‘If diesel or petrol produced in India from Russian oil enters Europe, this certainly constitutes a circumvention of the sanctions.’ The mechanism has essentially remained in place. Europe pays for Indian diesel without knowing – or pretending not to know – that it contains crude oil from Moscow.

Trump knows this. He uses it as an argument. And he builds his proposal for normalisation on this contradiction: if you’re already buying Russian goods indirectly, why not do so directly and save money?

The consequences for Ukraine and for us

Zelensky’s ousting has consequences that go beyond American propaganda. If Washington ceases to be the guarantor of Ukrainian resistance, Europe will be faced with a choice it has so far put off: to assume military and economic responsibility for the conflict, or to accept peace on Russia’s terms.

A swift peace on Moscow’s terms is not the end of the war. It is the end of this phase. Russia would emerge from a conflict it unleashed with consolidated territorial gains, with diplomatic normalisation guaranteed by Washington, and having demonstrated that aggression pays off when one is prepared to wait. The message to China and to anyone with expansionist ambitions would be clear: the West’s resistance has an expiry date.

For Europe, the normalisation of Russia as a player is not merely a Ukrainian issue. It is a matter of the continent’s security architecture. A Europe that accepts the Trumpian logic – a swift peace, no guarantees for Kyiv, Russia reintegrated into the Western energy system – is a Europe that relinquishes its own deterrent capability and once again becomes dependent on the will of others for its own security.

We’ve already paid for that addiction. The bill was presented on 24 February 2022.