U.S. President Donald Trump (right) and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy (left) meet for a bilateral meeting at the Veshtepe presidential palace during the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, on July 8, 2026.
Win McNamee | Getty Images
President Donald Trump said on Saturday it was time for Ukraine to elect a new president, suggested President Zelenskiy was not doing enough to end the war with Russia and blamed rising diesel prices in the United States.
“I propose that we elect a new leader who can make deals, because he could have made a lot of deals, but for some reason he never does,” Trump said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who signed a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday to buy diesel from Russia to combat rising fuel prices ahead of the U.S. midterm elections, has been pleading with President Zelenskiy for weeks to end strikes on Russia’s energy infrastructure. He also blames Ukraine for record high U.S. diesel prices, rather than the U.S.-led war with Iran, which has raised global energy prices.
“He wants to cause problems in the world. He wants to cause problems for our farmers and ranchers with diesel fuel,” Trump said before leaving for Tennessee, where he plans to rally Republican voters.
Ukrainian and European officials on Saturday expressed regret over President Trump’s diesel deal, saying it would help Russia pay for the war. Since the outbreak of the Iran war, various events have combined to make it difficult to export oil from the Middle East, causing diesel prices to soar and the overall price of petroleum products to rise.
According to a poll conducted last month by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and released on October 1, Americans disapprove of President Trump’s handling of Iran and blame him for the rise in prices.
Trump also suggested that if he were president of the United States in 2022, “that war would never have started. There was no reason for the war with Ukraine and Russia to start. The war started because of incompetence.”
President Zelenskiy said, “We lost 30% of our country, more than 1 million people passed between our two countries, and more than 2 million people were killed. That was a war that should never have started. And I think it’s time for Ukraine to have a new president.”
Independent estimates suggest that around 20% of Ukraine’s territory is under Russian control. British defense officials recently estimated that about 500,000 Russian soldiers had died in the war. There are no reliable recent estimates of how many Ukrainians have died.
20 people killed in Russian bombing in Ukraine on Saturday
Ukrainian officials announced Saturday that President Trump’s unusual intervention came after a Russian airstrike killed at least 20 people in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya region.
Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said on Saturday that Russian airstrikes hit a house in Zaporizhzhya, including three children among the dead. At least 18 people were injured.
More than four-and-a-half years after Moscow’s all-out invasion, Russia and Ukraine are still locked in a long-range air war with their militaries largely at a standstill on the front lines. Ukraine is struggling to cope with increased Russian shelling that has killed more than 60 people in the past four days.
Anger in Kiev over Trump-Putin deal
“Today, Russia dropped five glide bombs on houses in Zaporizhzhia to express its gratitude for the lifting of sanctions on diesel exports,” President Zelenskyy wrote in X on Saturday.
He said that every additional $1 billion Russia earns in exports would be used to pay for things such as weapons parts, drone upgrades, missile production and the recruitment of mercenaries, and that Russia was prepared to stop only if its combat capabilities deteriorated.
President Zelensky said Ukraine was coordinating measures to counter the additional revenues Russia would receive, said he had discussed strengthening air defenses with French President Emmanuel Macron, and warned of an increased risk of further missile attacks in the coming days.
President Trump announced Friday that Russia would supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel immediately, followed by another 500,000 tons in November and 1 million tons “soon thereafter.” After that, Russia plans to deliver another 3 million tons “within a short period of time,” he wrote.
In Kiev, people gathered at a monument to fallen soldiers on Independence Square welcomed the agreement with a mixture of anger and resignation.
“Trump has shown his true face again,” said Oleksandr Petrenko, 26. “He didn’t care about the situation, the shelling, the destruction of homes. All he cares about is the price of oil and fuel and how much the American people have to pay.”
For Oksana Yakunina, a financial advisor in Kropnytskyi City Center, the announcement was “not really a surprise.”
“Mr. Trump has been working with President Putin for a long time,” she told The Associated Press.
European allies question US-Russia deal
Ukraine’s European allies also expressed regret over the deal and said they supported the sanctions commitment.
Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Stockholm regretted the deal “because energy revenues are central to Russia’s military funding,” noting that the European Union on Monday adopted the most comprehensive sanctions package ever, introducing 1,600 sanctions targeting Russia’s military-industrial complex.
Spokesman Stefan Cornelius said the German government “remains committed to sanctions against Russia and is cooperating with European countries on further sanctions,” adding that its support for Ukraine was “unwavering.”
Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski questioned whether Russia would be able to achieve results. Citing embassy reports that Moscow is also running low on fuel and “seriously informed sources” who say Ukraine has damaged about half of Russia’s refining capacity, he asked X: “So where will the surplus for export come from?”
President Trump’s announcement was in stark contrast to sweeping Russia sanctions legislation he signed last month aimed at squeezing oil and gas revenues that fuel Russia’s war against Ukraine.
President Trump announced the deal after his special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner met with Ukrainian officials in Miami on Friday to discuss proposals to end the war.
Regarding Friday’s announcement, a senior Ukrainian official told The Associated Press that Ukraine was unaware of the deal until it was announced.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said Saturday that the diesel deal announcement had nothing to do with what is being discussed in Florida.
He confirmed that the Ukrainian delegation had left Florida and was on its way back to Ukraine.
