Trump blames Kyiv for diesel costs amid Mideast oil crisis

What happened

President Donald Trump Sunday blamed Ukraine for rising diesel prices. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy “has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump told reporters at his golf club in Ireland. “He’s causing a shortage of diesel fuel” and “that’s hurting the world.” The shortage “isn’t done by the Middle East,” he added. “This is done by what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine.”

U.S. diesel prices reached a record $6.20 a gallon Sunday, nearly 65% higher than when Trump attacked Iran in February. Crude oil was trading above $107 a barrel Sunday night “after new Houthi strikes on Saudi Arabia and Iranian attacks on ships” in the Strait of Hormuz “compounded supply concerns following the closure of a key Saudi oil pipeline,” Reuters said.

Who said what

For months, Ukraine has been “targeting Russia’s oil and gas industry with long-range strikes,” The Associated Press said, “prompting fuel rationing” and “causing Moscow to ban diesel exports.” Previously, Russia was the “second-largest exporter of diesel, behind the U.S.,” CNN said.

But “Russian exports of diesel and oil have never been significant for U.S. consumption — the very idea is absurd,” a senior European official told Politico. Trump and his team are “blaming Ukraine because they do not know what to do” with their unpopular Iran war.

What next?

Yemen is the “latest domino to fall in the chain of instability set off by the U.S. war with Iran,” The Wall Street Journal said. Last week’s Houthi “lightning offensive” to tighten control over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait “has put the two most important energy corridors in the Middle East” under the “sway of Iran and its allies.”

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