# US-Russia Diesel Deal 2026 On **October 9, 2026**, after a phone call with [[Vladimir Putin]], [[Donald Trump]] announced that Russia would deliver diesel fuel to the American and global market. The same day, the [[Department of the Treasury]]'s Office of Foreign Assets Control issued **General License No. 135**, authorizing transactions in Russian-origin diesel that U.S. sanctions had prohibited. The relief came **three weeks after** Trump signed the [[Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026]] — a statute written to tighten pressure on Russian energy revenue. Within four days a bipartisan group of twelve senators, six from each party, asked him to rescind both the deal and the license. ## What General License No. 135 does - **Issued October 9, 2026; authorized through April 7, 2027** — a six-month window. - Authorizes **all transactions** ordinarily prohibited under the Russian Harmful Foreign Activities Sanctions Regulations and the Ukraine-/Russia-Related Sanctions Regulations that relate to the **sale, delivery, offloading, or importation of Russian-origin diesel fuel, including into the United States**. - Names **no supplier, buyer, or vessel**. It is a category authorization, not a transaction-specific waiver. - **Does not** delist [[Russia]]'s sanctioned oil majors; designations on Rosneft and Lukoil remain. - **Does not** authorize debits to accounts held at U.S. financial institutions by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, the National Wealth Fund, or the Russian Ministry of Finance. - UK and EU measures are untouched, so UK- and EU-linked shippers generally still cannot move Russian diesel to the United States outside the price cap. > [!warning] Unresolved — the volume > The announced size of the deal is **not two-sourced and the available figures conflict**: Trump described "millions of metric tons," a sanctions advisory put the first tranche at 300,000 tons, and other reporting cited figures an order of magnitude smaller. The Kremlin confirmed only a "readiness" to supply and repeated no volume at all. No tonnage is recorded on this page until two independent sources agree. ## The statutory problem General License No. 135 sits against a certification requirement: the governing statute bars certain Russian oil-product imports unless the President certifies specified conditions, and members of Congress have said those conditions were not met. That makes the license a candidate for legal challenge, and it is the reason the senators' letter asks for rescission rather than merely objecting to the policy. It also runs directly against the [[Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026]], signed **September 18, 2026**, whose mandatory-designation and energy-tariff provisions were written to make Russian energy revenue harder to earn. That page's standing question — whether the Act describes a policy or a gesture — got its first answer here, in the opposite direction: the first major Russian-energy action after enactment was relief, not designation. See [[Sanctions Designation Pipeline]]. ## The bipartisan letter, October 13, 2026 Twelve senators wrote to Trump asking him to withdraw from the agreement, rescind General License No. 135, and use the authorities Congress had just given him. The signatories: | Senator | Party | State | |---|---|---| | [[Richard Blumenthal]] | D | Connecticut | | [[Chris Coons]] | D | Delaware | | [[Dick Durbin]] | D | Illinois | | [[Jack Reed]] | D | Rhode Island | | [[Jeanne Shaheen]] | D | New Hampshire | | [[Sheldon Whitehouse]] | D | Rhode Island | | [[Alan Armstrong]] | R | Oklahoma | | [[Susan Collins]] | R | Maine | | [[John Cornyn]] | R | Texas | | [[Mitch McConnell]] | R | Kentucky | | [[Lisa Murkowski]] | R | Alaska | | [[Thom Tillis]] | R | North Carolina | > [!quote] From the letter, October 13, 2026 > "This deal is a gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our Allies; it should be rescinded" The letter's argument is institutional rather than moral: Congress passed the sanctions Act to **require** economic pressure on Russia and its enablers, and the executive used a Treasury license to go the other way. Asked about the letter, Trump told reporters the arrangement was "a diesel deal" for the world market rather than for the United States. ## Market reaction U.S. diesel futures rose about **5% by midday on October 13, 2026**, their highest level in several weeks, with European diesel futures up roughly 3.8% — a move read as traders doubting that Russian diesel would actually arrive. Gulf Oil adviser Tom Kloza, who reported wholesale increases of 18 to 30 cents a gallon across U.S. regions that day, said the market was "clearly not believing that Russian oil is on the way." The nationwide average diesel price was up about **70% since February 28, 2026**, the day the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran — see [[Iran War 2026 Timeline]] and [[Gas Prices]]. Analysts quoted in the same reporting estimated the Russian volumes would at best cover less than two weeks of U.S. demand. > [!warning] Unresolved — the record price > Reporting on October 13 put the U.S. retail diesel record at **$6.53/gal**; a separate market tracker put the AAA record at **$6.52/gal, set September 22, 2026**. The one-cent gap is a provider difference (AAA vs. GasBuddy), not a contradiction, but neither figure is two-sourced on its own. ## Ukraine [[Volodymyr Zelensky]] said Ukraine received **no intelligence warning from its Western partners** about the Russian missiles that struck Kyiv overnight on October 13, 2026, one of which hit a power plant. The absence followed Trump's stated threat to stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine unless it halted strikes on Russian refineries; Trump told reporters the same day that the United States was still sharing intelligence. Zelensky had already called the diesel deal "a weak decision by our strong partners" — see [[Donald Trump - He better damn well stop]]. ## Why this matters **It is the second time in seven months that an energy-price emergency produced sanctions relief for Russia.** In March 2026 the administration waived Russian and Iranian oil sanctions during the [[Strait of Hormuz]] closure (see [[Russia and Iran Oil Sanctions Waivers 2026]]). The pattern is the same: a shortage created or worsened by the [[Iran War 2026]] is answered by loosening pressure on an adversary, and the stated beneficiary is the American consumer. **The price signal went the wrong way within four days.** Whatever the deal does for Russian revenue, the futures market priced it as supplying nothing — which is the detail that makes this an [[Affordability]] story three weeks before the [[2026 Midterm Elections]] rather than only a foreign-policy one. **It produced the cycle's broadest Republican break with Trump on Russia.** Six Republican senators, including the minority's longest-serving leader, signing a letter demanding the President reverse a deal he struck personally with Putin is a larger defection than the Graham Act's passage required of anyone. ## See Also - [[Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026]] — the statute the license works against - [[Russia and Iran Oil Sanctions Waivers 2026]] — the March 2026 precedent - [[Donald Trump - He better damn well stop]] — Trump's October 10 response to Ukraine's objections - [[Sanctions Designation Pipeline]] · [[Secondary Sanctions]] · [[Dark Fleet]] · [[Maximum Pressure]] - [[Ukraine War Timeline]] · [[Trump-Russia Arc Timeline]] · [[Iran War 2026 Timeline]] - [[Gas Prices]] · [[Affordability]] · [[State of the US Economy]] - [[Russia]] · [[Ukraine]] · [[Vladimir Putin]] · [[Volodymyr Zelensky]]