US President Donald Trump’s decision to purchase diesel from Russia has triggered questions over its compatibility with a sanctions law he signed last month, just days before a deadline for imposing steep tariffs on countries that continue buying Russian oil and gas, including major importers such as India.
The deal came under scrutiny on American television on Sunday, with journalists highlighting the apparent contradiction between Washington’s planned Russian diesel purchases and its efforts to penalise other countries for importing Russian energy.
On CNN’s State of the Union, host Jake Tapper said Trump was seeking to bring down “skyrocketing fuel costs” by purchasing six million barrels of diesel, an amount he described as barely sufficient to cover a day and a half of US demand.
Tapper questioned the decision, noting that Trump was purchasing fuel from Russian President Vladimir Putin despite signing legislation aimed at sanctioning countries that buy Russian oil.
On ABC’s This Week, co-anchor Jonathan Karl said the deal appeared to conflict with a law Congress passed following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. He also highlighted Trump’s earlier criticism of European countries that continued purchasing Russian energy while opposing Moscow over the war.
“They’re buying oil and gas from Russia, while they’re fighting Russia. It’s embarrassing to them,” Trump had said in an address to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2025.
“Of course, the president announced on Friday that the US now plans to do exactly the same thing,” Karl said.
The legislation at the centre of the controversy is the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, signed by Trump on September 18.
Section 113 requires the President, within 30 days of the law’s enactment, to raise duties to as much as 100 per cent on goods imported from countries that were among the five largest buyers of Russian crude oil or natural gas during the preceding 12 months, provided they knowingly make new purchases on or after the deadline. The 30-day deadline falls on October 18.
Section 112 separately provides for duties of up to 500 per cent on goods imported from Russia, explicitly including petroleum products, by the same deadline.
However, the law allows the President to waive duties if he certifies to Congress that doing so is in the national interest of the United States. It also preserves the Treasury Department’s authority to issue general licences authorising otherwise restricted transactions.
The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued General License 135 on Friday, authorising transactions involving Russian-origin diesel until April 2027. The administration has not publicly clarified how it intends to apply the law’s tariff provisions alongside the diesel arrangement.
Trump has said Russia will initially supply more than 300,000 tonnes of diesel, followed by 500,000 tonnes in November and one million tonnes thereafter.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticised the arrangement in an interview with ABC, saying it would provide Moscow with money to continue its military campaign.
“It gives Putin money and he spends money only on this war,” Zelensky said.
Republican House Majority Whip Tom Emmer defended the move, describing it as another example of Trump “thinking out of the box”.
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, also a Republican, criticised his party’s political messaging on the issue, calling it “malpractice” to suggest that buying Russian oil was acceptable when Moscow could use the proceeds to finance its war against Ukraine.
The approaching October 18 deadline puts the administration under pressure to clarify how it will reconcile its energy procurement plans with the sanctions framework and whether countries such as India could face additional US tariffs over continued purchases of Russian energy.
FOLLOW NOW
