Susan Glasser's new piece in The New Yorker zeroes in on what matters most. Trump's party is barely holding both chambers of Congress, his approval is at record lows, and he picked this very week to run a campaign against Zelensky while openly helping Putin's war of conquest.
The sequence is worth laying out.
The Diesel Waiver and the Phantom Truce
Last Friday Trump held a long call with Putin. Then he announced he was waiving energy sanctions so the US could buy hundreds of thousands of tons of Russian diesel. The aim was to push down fuel prices, which have surged largely due to the Middle East war he started himself. Almost immediately he began blaming Zelensky, not Russia, for the war. He demanded that Ukraine stop hitting Russian energy facilities, and he said Kyiv should "get a new leader."
Over the weekend he declared an "ENERGY CEASE FIRE." It appeared to have been invented on the spot. Russia launched deadly new bombardments within hours. Even Laura Loomer, who for a long stretch pushed Kremlin lines before changing sides after visiting Ukraine, concluded that Putin was trying to humiliate the Trump administration. Her motives are her own business, and her past stays on the record. Still, when a former Kremlin megaphone says the Kremlin is playing the White House, the MAGA audience she built is hearing it from someone they trusted.
The Starlink Cutoff
By Wednesday, US-supplied Starlink service briefly went down ahead of another large Russian attack. Zelensky described the rift as all but permanent. Ukraine is "losing a strong partner," he told Piers Morgan. "It hurts when Trump chooses a side, and not ours."
The rift is concrete. Zelensky had earlier floated an alternative to hitting refineries: extending Starlink to Russia and going after ballistic missile launchers instead. No answer came. Then Starshield service in Ukraine was throttled. In his Financial Times interview, he said Ukraine kept Trump's energy truce for three days and will not do so again. "It is over," he said, despite US threats to cut off intelligence sharing.
Pushback Inside America
The backlash is not only Democratic.
- Six Republican senators wrote to Trump that the diesel deal is a "gift to our adversary and a betrayal of allies."
- The Wall Street Journal's editorial board condemned it as both a moral and a strategic error, and Mike Pence amplified that verdict.
- Schumer and Blumenthal accused Trump of enabling Putin, and Blumenthal warned American companies eyeing Russian fuel that Congress is watching them.
Trump's own party is telling him in writing that he is feeding the enemy.
The Numbers and the Calendar
A new Fox News poll this week puts Trump's job approval at 36 percent, his lowest yet. Seventy percent say he handles the economy badly. Midterms are on November 3. No Russian diesel will reach American pumps in time to save him, and it may never arrive at all. The waiver cannot fix that part.
The Scapegoat Play
Angela Stent, who served as US national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia under Bush, reads the timing as deliberate. In her view, Trump is preparing to pin a poor Republican showing on Zelensky. If diesel prices stay high, Ukraine will be to blame, and Zelensky will have to go. Americans going into an election season angry about their own problems are not waiting to hear that Kyiv should fire its president. But it gives Trump a villain who is not himself.
The Damage to Alliances
Senator Chris Coons, who would chair Foreign Relations if Democrats win the Senate, was blunt. He recalled how hard it was just to get Trump to sign the Graham sanctions bill. Now, he says, Trump has undercut his own Ukraine policy by repeating a decade-old pattern: first a timid step toward helping Kyiv, then a talk with Putin, then a slide back toward Moscow. Asked whether the breach with European allies can be repaired, Coons answered, "No, not while Trump is president." He expects a lame-duck phase and warns that the harm Trump can do over the next two years is underestimated.
Former senior US diplomat Daniel Fried, just back from security talks in Poland and Romania, said the moment of greatest danger is now. Putin knows it and will exploit it. Moscow is escalating attacks that probe allies, and Trump's envoys are again pushing Kyiv to accept terms that look more like surrender than compromise.
The question Glasser ends on is the ugliest one. Is Trump returning to Putin to help his party win, or because he actually wants Russia to win?