President Donald Trump said on October 10 that "it's time for Ukraine to get a new president." Speaking to reporters at the White House before leaving for a rally in Tennessee, he added: "I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal," saying Zelensky "could have made many deals and for some reason he never does." He said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky "wants to make problems for our farmers, our ranchers, with diesel fuel."
The remarks followed Trump's October 9 announcement of a diesel supply agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The US Treasury issued a general license suspending sanctions on Russian diesel until April 7, 2027. The license is a confirmed government action. The supply schedule is Trump's account. Putin's envoy Kirill Dmitriev welcomed the cooperation but did not confirm the volumes. Zelensky called the deal an "investment in war that must be ended, not prolonged". On October 10 he said Russia had answered by dropping five glide bombs on residential buildings in Zaporizhzhia. This article tests the two reasons Trump gave.
The two claims against the record
The first claim is that Zelensky's refinery strikes burden American farmers through diesel prices. The record points elsewhere. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that the United States has not imported Russian oil or gas since 2022. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has called the near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz, tied to the US-Iran war, the largest supply disruption in history. Trump made a similar attribution on September 13. A senior European official told POLITICO the claim was "absurd."
The deal's size also matters. The first tranche of 300,000 tons is about 2.25 million barrels, against US daily consumption of roughly 3.8 million. Investment strategist Tim Armitage of Quilter Cheviot said it is too small to "make any material difference to pump prices." Delivery is unverified. Russia has had a diesel export ban since July 2026, and the IEA estimates its diesel output has fallen about 30%.
The second claim is that Zelensky "could have made many deals." Zelensky offered a reciprocal arrangement: Ukraine stops hitting refineries if Russia stops hitting Ukrainian power plants. A US official told Axios that Trump did not see the two as equivalent. Putin's demand for full control of Donbas, including areas Kyiv still holds, has not changed, and Zelensky has rejected surrendering that land. In the October 9 call, Putin declined to commit to resuming peace talks, according to his foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov. Trump's September 14 claim of a mutual energy halt was confirmed by neither side.
Observers are reading: the sequence from six unanswered US requests to sanctions relief to a call for new leadership, and what it indicates about leverage.
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What the record leaves open
On the evidence available as of October 10, neither reason Trump gave is supported by the record. The IEA identifies the Hormuz disruption, not Ukrainian strikes, as the main supply shock. Zelensky's reciprocal offer was not accepted, and Putin declined to commit to resuming talks in the October 9 call, according to Ushakov. That finding is limited to the two claims tested here.
Whether Washington follows the rhetoric with further pressure is not established. Witkoff and Kushner are considering visits to Moscow and Kyiv next week, and it is unclear whether this exchange affects those plans. A US official told Axios, "we think he is open to a discussion on ending the war."
The unsentimental reading is that alliances last as long as the interests that sustain them. Where American domestic priorities and Ukrainian survival diverge, the weaker party carries the cost. Whether that divergence holds depends on decisions not yet taken in Washington, Kyiv and Moscow.
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