™Trump Blames Zelenskyy for High Diesel Prices. Federal Data Doesn't Back Him.
U.S. diesel peaked at $6.53 a gallon, then fell two straight weeks before Trump's Russia diesel deal, federal data shows.
President Trump said Saturday that Ukraine should get a new president and blamed Volodymyr Zelenskyy's refinery strikes for high diesel prices, CBS News reported.
"I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal," Trump told reporters as he left the White House for Tennessee, according to CBS. He spoke the day after announcing that Russia would ship diesel with U.S. sanctions waived. He also spoke hours after Russian bombs hit residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia and killed at least 20 people, three of them children, Ukrainian officials said.
The diesel part is a claim about prices, and the federal government counts prices every week. Checked against that count, the claim is unsupported.
Trump said he'd given Zelenskyy a free hand against Russia with one exception: refineries. "He better damn well stop," Trump told reporters, CBS reported. He pinned the price pain on Ukraine's strikes with the midterms coming, and with the war in Iran still going.
The Energy Information Administration's weekly survey had the U.S. average for on-highway diesel at $5.60 a gallon on Aug. 31. By Sept. 21 it was $6.53. That's a 93-cent jump in three weeks.
Then prices turned. Diesel fell two weeks in a row and reached $6.20 on Oct. 5, about 33 cents below the peak. All of that drop came before Trump announced the Russia deal on Friday.
It's still a painful number. Diesel cost nearly $2.49 a gallon more than a year earlier, and California's average was $8.08, the EIA's latest release shows. But the series tracks what buyers pay, not why they pay it, and nothing in it ties the run-up to Ukraine.
Trump's own announcement does tie the deal to Russia's refineries. Russia would send more than 300,000 tons of diesel right away, 500,000 tons in November and 1 million tons after that, he wrote on Truth Social. A final 3 million tons would come "based on the condition of their Diesel Refineries," the post said. Those are the kind of plants he's now telling Ukraine to leave alone.
On Friday the Treasury Department said it was waiving Russian energy sanctions for now so the diesel could reach world markets. A month earlier, Trump signed a sweeping sanctions law meant to choke off the oil and gas money that pays for Russia's war.
Zelenskyy said Friday the deal amounted to an investment in that war and would let Moscow keep fighting longer. Russian bombardment has killed more than 60 people in Ukraine over four days, CBS reported. Missiles also hit Kyiv in daylight Saturday and wounded four people, Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said.
On Saturday, Ukraine's president tied the deal to the bombs himself. "Today, Russia expressed its thanks for the lifting of sanctions on diesel exports by dropping five glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia," Zelenskyy wrote on X.
Source: CBS News, retrieved October 10, 2026. Other sources: eia.gov, eia.gov (2).
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