Let’s not forget Ukraine, though Trump wants us to

It’s been a bit more than four and a half years since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 for no reason other than a desire to reconstitute the Soviet Union. Back then, I and most other Americans supported the brave Ukrainian people in their fight against a much larger enemy led by an authoritarian despot, Putin.

I’m confident this still is the case.

Any American who pays attention to the facts knows that the good guys in this war are the Ukrainians, and the bad guys are the Russians. Unfortunately, our Idiot-in-Chief, Donald Trump, wouldn’t know a fact if it bit him in his fat ass. So he keeps taking Putin’s side in the war, even though Russia started it and continues to fight all attempts to bring the war to an end.

I follow the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on X, formerly known as Twitter. I also follow The Kyiv Independent, which reports honestly on how the war is going from an up close Ukrainian perspective. Here’s a couple of recent posts from them that will give you a feel for what I read every day.

Trump’s attempts to hurt Ukraine and help Russia infuriate me. Ukraine has skillfully used drones to attack Russian oil refineries and other infrastructure. This has dramatically reduced Russian oil revenues, the country’s main source of income, which hinders Russia’s ability to finance its war against Ukraine.

But Trump wrongly believes, or pretends that he believes for reasons known only to the Orange One, that Ukraine is to blame for the sky-high price of diesel in the United States. There’s a bit of truth to this, since Ukrainian drone strikes have indeed hindered Russia’s ability to produce diesel.

So even though U.S. law prohibits our country from buying fossil fuels from Russia, Trump has eliminated sanctions on Russia that prevented the import of diesel. This has deeply angered Ukraine, for good reason. However, a story in today’s New York Times, “Why Trump’s Diesel Deal With Putin Won’t Knock Down High Prices,” explains why Trump’s horrible deal will be ineffective.

Diesel prices in the United States are hovering near record highs — and a deal President Trump announced last week to increase Russian fuel exports is unlikely to lower them significantly anytime soon.

The amount of diesel Russia could supply under that agreement is much lower than what the country was exporting this time last year and constitutes a small proportion of the diesel supply the world has lost because of Mr. Trump’s war with Iran, energy analysts said. And it is not clear that Russia could even deliver all the fuel the president and Russian offiicials have promised.

The numbers are stark.

From July through September of 2025, Russia exported around 693,000 barrels of diesel a day, according to S&P Global Energy. For the same period this year, the country exported around 140,000 barrels a day. Now, Mr. Trump and a Russian deputy prime minister, Alexander Novak, say that the country would export 300,000 metric tons of diesel in October, or roughly 75,000 barrels a day when stretched across a month.

The numbers under Mr. Trump’s deal with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia look even more meager when compared with the diesel that the world is no longer getting from the Middle East since the United States and Israel began attacking Iran on Feb. 28. Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East exported 809,000 fewer barrels of diesel every day from July through the end of September, compared with the same period in 2025, according to S&P Global data.

“The main issue is still the Strait of Hormuz, that there is not enough diesel coming out of the Strait of Hormuz,” said Sarah Raffoul, oil product analyst at Argus, referring to the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman through which a significant share of the world’s fuels used to flow.

Trump fantasizes that simply by saying in a Truth Social post that Russia and Ukraine have agreed not to attack each other’s energy infrastructure, a limited cease fire can occur. But after Trump claimed that both sides had agreed to this cease fire, Russia used ballistic missiles to destroy power plants in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital.

Now 600,000 people are without electricity as winter approaches. Ukraine has refrained from further attacks on Russia refineries to avoid antagonizing Trump, according to a New York Times story, “Ukraine’s Exposure Grows as Satellite Use is Restricted and Russia Escalates.”

Nearly five years into its fight for national survival, Ukraine has entered a moment of intense vulnerability, under growing pressure not only from Russia but also now from the United States.

A double blow came overnight on Wednesday.

Ukraine said that its military, with no warning, had lost some critical access to a military version of Starlink, a pillar of its battlefield communications. Kyiv relies on the satellite internet network, known as Starshield, which is paid for by the Pentagon. That led Ukrainian officials and analysts to surmise that the restrictions had come from Washington, as President Trump is locked in his latest feud with Ukraine’s leadership.

At the same time, Russia unleashed dozens of ballistic missiles in a broad attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure early Wednesday, cutting power to 600,000 people in the capital, Kyiv. It was a dark omen for a rapidly approaching winter in which Russia is gearing up to try to push Ukraine to the breaking point as Kyiv runs low on lifesaving air defenses.

It was unclear how long the Starshield restrictions would remain in place. Still, the Trump administration’s treatment of Ukraine has caused outrage in a country already reeling from a string of challenges.

…Even as Russia pounds Ukraine day after day, leading to some of the highest civilian death tolls seen in years of war, Kyiv says it is abiding by Mr. Trump’s demand not to strike Russian oil refineries. Its campaign against refineries, which had led to fuel shortages across Russia, made Russians feel the war as never before.

Kyiv has said it is unfair that Russia is still attacking Ukraine’s power plants and substations. Mr. Zelensky has asserted that the strikes violate Mr. Trump’s self-declared energy cease-fire in Ukraine. The Trump administration views the cease-fire as covering only strikes on oil refineries, even though Ukraine has none that are operational.

Vote for Democrats in the midterm election. Here in Salem. Elsewhere in Oregon. Nationally. The more pushback Trump gets from elected officials, the more likely his misguided efforts to help Russian and hurt Ukraine will fail.