Trump eases Russian diesel sanctions ahead of midterms

Donald Trump has eased sanctions on Russian diesel ahead of US mid-term elections that rising fuel prices have overshadowed. Britain's answer arrives on Wednesday, when Prime Minister Andy Burnham welcomes Volodymyr Zelensky to Downing Street and is expected to announce accelerated military support and further rounds of sanctions against Moscow.

The staging is deliberate. Chancellor John Healey used IMF meetings in Bangkok to call for a ban on Russian liquefied natural gas, and the UK is urging allies to increase pressure on Moscow at the precise moment Washington has chosen to relax its own. The accelerated British package includes faster deliveries of lightweight multirole missiles, which have proved effective against Russian jet-powered drones. Burnham telephoned Zelensky on Saturday to express his "complete solidarity," and describes British support as "rock solid" and "vital for keeping us safe here in the UK."

For Kyiv, the more urgent question is intelligence. On Tuesday Zelensky said his government received no warning from its partners before a Russian ballistic missile strike the previous evening, and that further attacks arrived without warning that night. The silence raised fears that the United States had stopped sharing intelligence with Ukraine; Trump insisted it had not, speaking as he left the White House for a campaign trip to Alaska. In recent days the president has suggested Ukraine needs a new leader and claimed Vladimir Putin wants a peace deal more than the government in Kyiv does. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband described "a very difficult few days" in relations with Washington.

Washington spent years pressing European governments to give up Russian hydrocarbons, and Europe paid heavily to comply. When American fuel prices began to threaten the midterms, the diesel sanctions went. Healey's call for an LNG ban and Trump's diesel deal are not contradictory policies — they are the same policy, applied to different countries.

One of Tuesday night's strikes, which arrived without warning, hit one of Kyiv's main power plants.