Here-s what Trump-s latest U-turn really means for Russia and Ukraine

Here-s what Trump-s latest U-turn really means for Russia and Ukraine

Washington’s diesel waiver sidelines Ukraine. Will Trump now curb intelligence assistance to pressure Kiev?
The latest turn in Russia-US relations has shocked Kiev, outraged the EU, provoked discontent among a considerable number of politicians in the US, and left many observers around the world perplexed.
The Trump administration’s sudden decision to suspend sanctions on Russian diesel supplies appears to contradict its recent actions, including the adoption of tough new sanctions legislation intended to increase pressure on Moscow, and while some attribute the reversal to US President Donald Trump’s unpredictability, others see the beginnings of a new policy, or evidence of a fundamental change in the administration’s approach to Ukraine.
To understand what’s happening, however, we must look beyond the peculiarities of the US president’s public behavior. Trump’s extravagance, which frequently borders on the absurd, often conceals a relatively clear set of objectives, but whether those objectives are sensible is another question.
The most likely explanation for his latest reversal lies in domestic American politics, as the congressional midterm elections are less than a month away, and the Republican Party faces difficult prospects. Trump maintains an air of indifference, but losing control of both houses of Congress would condemn him to two years of political confrontation and considerable frustration.
He probably understands that there’s little prospect of fundamentally improving the economic situation, particularly consumer prices, before voters go to the polls, so for now, the emphasis is on psychological impact.
Russia isn’t the first country Washington has approached about increasing fuel supplies to international markets, and the more agreements Trump can announce, the more opportunities he has to proclaim that the White House is working tirelessly to protect ordinary Americans from rising prices.
The expectation, presumably, is that voters will forget how much of the present difficulty stems from Trump’s own actions in the Persian Gulf.
We shall soon discover whether this approach works, but there’s nothing particularly irrational about it, and Trump is pursuing a deliberate political objective. The fact that his latest decision contradicts previous statements doesn’t trouble him because he’s long operated on the assumption that words have value at the moment they’re spoken, but impose few obligations thereafter.
What does this mean for Russia, beyond the welcome prospect of additional budget revenues?
Colleagues from the Vatfor project have identified an important development, in that for the first time since the beginning of the conflict, the US president has made a significant decision regarding Russia without making Ukraine the determining consideration.
Until now, the Ukrainian question has been inseparable from virtually every aspect of Washington’s policy towards Moscow, but this time, not only has it been set aside, the decision directly contradicts Kiev’s interests at a particularly difficult moment.
Hence the indignation of the Ukrainian leadership, as from its perspective, the Americans have behaved unfairly.
There are probably several reasons for this change, but the principal one appears to be Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s unwillingness to accommodate Washington’s demands that Ukraine stop attacking Russian energy infrastructure.
Read more The strikes have become one of Kiev’s principal instruments of warfare, and American requests to curtail them have largely gone unanswered.
Trump, meanwhile, has become fixated on Russian oil supplies as a means of addressing rising fuel prices, and their importance shouldn’t be exaggerated, even if additional Russian supplies alone are unlikely to transform the global market. Nevertheless, Trump has evidently decided that Zelensky bears respo