Trump Pushes Energy Truce As Russian Refineries Burn

President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are set to discuss an energy ceasefire Tuesday as Ukrainian strikes knock Russian refining capacity offline, deepening pressure on an already strained global fuel supply.

Zelenskyy is expected to meet Trump on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, where a mutual halt to Russian and Ukrainian attacks on energy infrastructure will be among the issues under discussion, Reuters reported. The talks carry consequences well beyond the battlefield, as Ukraine’s campaign against Russian refineries has taken a growing share of Moscow’s refining capacity offline and experts warn that even relatively small losses in global oil supply can produce outsized price shocks.

“Russia is the world’s third-largest refiner. The sustained Ukrainian drone campaign has cut Russia’s production by 30% over the past year, to its lowest level in more than two decades,” Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University, told the DCNF. “Ukraine has now hit all but four of Russia’s 32 largest refineries.”

The disruption to oil flows from Russian exports to the rest of the world is having a devastating effect on global oil markets because even small supply disruptions can lead to large price changes, one expert told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“The price elasticity for crude oil is approximately minus 0.47, meaning that for a 1% drop in supply to the market, the price will go up roughly 25%,” Ed Hirs, an energy fellow at the University of Houston, told the DCNF. “Logically, this makes sense. If you’re one gallon short of getting home to mom for Thanksgiving, you’d pay $25 a gallon for that, wouldn’t you?”

Trump has separately pressed Zelenskyy to stop Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries as part of a broader effort to de-escalate the war, Reuters reported, citing an anonymous source familiar with the discussions. Kyiv is reluctant to give up those attacks without concessions from Moscow because Ukrainian officials view damage to Russia’s oil industry as a major source of leverage.

“Ukraine’s strategy of targeting Russian refining has been highly effective, with current estimates that about 43% of Russia’s total refining is now offline,” David Blackmon, a Texas-based energy writer and consultant who spent 40 years in the oil and gas industry, told the DCNF. “Formerly the world’s biggest exporter of diesel and other refined products, Russia now finds itself forced to import diesel fuel from India.”

“Consistent reporting suggests the impacts [on Russian energy infrastructure] are substantial — and growing,” J.D. Foster, a former senior fellow on the economics of fiscal policy at The Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF. “Ukraine’s capacity to strike deep and strike hard is growing, Russia’s ability to defend is declining as is Russia’s ability to repair struck facilities. The true evidence lies in the many stories about rising gas prices and long lines at service stations. Putin does not want the effects of the war washing over the general population.”

The State Department, the Pentagon and the Ukrainian and Russian embassies in Washington did not respond to requests for comment.