Recall what happened between May and July of this year, when Ukraine launched one of the most destructive phases of its energy war against Moscow, sending waves of drones attacking massive Russian refineries at Kirishi, Ryazan, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, and Omsk one after another. If Russian refining capacity governed American fuel costs, prices at U.S. truck stops should have exploded. Instead, American diesel fell by $1.06 a gallon.
The charge is politically convenient but economically backward. Until this month’s waiver, Russian fuel had been barred from American ports since 2022, meaning Ukrainian strikes have reached U.S. pumps only through the gradual tightening of global supply. The real shockwave runs through the Strait of Hormuz, where Tehran can choke off a fifth of the world’s seaborne crude overnight. Diesel was $3.48 a gallon in January and still under $4 the week American and Israeli bombs fell on Iran. When Tehran closed the Strait, the price jumped 96 cents in a single week.
Ukraine’s unceasing drone campaign has at most modestly nudged up the global floor, while the Iran war has steered every spike and plunge.
Now, Ukraine and its European backers are left with a narrowing set of options. Pulled with discipline, however, the levers they hold can still keep Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on a tightening clock.
Carnegie’s Sergey Vakulenko calls the arrangement “largely for show,” yet for a Kremlin watching its September oil and gas tax revenues plunge 22% year-over-year, the spectacle is the prize. What former U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul condemned as “absolutely deplorable,” and Zelenskyy called “a gift to Putin,” was followed a week later by a concession of far greater strategic weight. Two days before the Russia provisions of the Graham sanctions act were scheduled to bite, an executive order waived them. In a single stroke, the White House neutralized both the 100 and 500% tariffs and stripped out the clause locking existing sanctions in place.
Meanwhile, the speed of Starshield datalinks, the military-grade Starlink network that Ukraine’s drone units rely on, was throttled. Starshield datalinks need to operate at speeds up to 550 km/h (342 mph) to effectively intercept Russian jet-powered Shahed and Geran drones.
Trump and Elon Musk finger-pointed at each other for the restriction. Trump has reportedly since called Musk to lift the cap. U.S. officials say service is running more normally. Kyiv says the limit remained in place into this weekend, with President Zelenskyy tweeting on October 24 that service has now been restored.
What Ukraine can still do
Washington’s squeeze rests on the premise that Kyiv is losing and must be forced to settle, but the front-line situation does not support that notion. Russian forces have made virtually no net territorial gains in 2026 despite suffering more than 40,000 casualties a month since July. At this year’s rate of advance, we estimate that Moscow would need 60 years to capture the rest of Donetsk Oblast.
Nor can the White House physically switch that campaign off. For all the damage the administration’s freeze inflicted on Ukraine’s air shield, enough Ukrainian drones and missiles were able to reach their targets. Washington’s leverage is entirely defensive, whereas Ukraine’s offensive reach is built at home and in Europe. The 1,000-strong armada that struck St. Petersburg in mid-October was built around FP-1 drones, 90% of which are Ukrainian-made, flying into Russian airspace where Starlink does not function, and Starshield caps do not apply. The E.U.’s Kaja Kallas has rightly defended Ukraine’s actions as legitimate self-defense.
In 2022, hundreds of billions of dollars abandoned the Russian economy after our team helped spur the withdrawal of more than 1,000 major corporations following the invasion. Firms that curtailed operations outperformed those that did not, in terms of market performance.
Holding an offensive campaign that Washington wants to stop but cannot physically block changes the terms of diplomacy. Toward the White House, Kyiv should act as a customer rather than a supplicant. Any pause in energy strikes should be treated strictly as an opportunity to make a deal—offered only in exchange for verified Russian reciprocity and binding, written guarantees from Washington on Patriot interceptors, satellite-based missile launch warnings, and uncapped Starshield access, a bargain of the kind legislators like Senator Roger Wicker and organizations like the Foundation for Defense of Democracies have urged.
The on-again, off-again war with Iran that drove U.S. diesel to $6.53 is also the conflict that emptied the Pentagon’s magazines. According to an analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Gulf conflict consumed roughly two-thirds of America’s Patriot inventory and more than a third of its THAAD interceptors, leaving a rebuild measured in years at the exact moment Ukraine’s Patriot stockpiles are reportedly exhausted. Europe’s scramble to build sovereign air defenses—four SAMP/T NG batteries currently on order, a 10-nation FREYJA program aiming for a first intercept in mid-2027, and the diplomatic courtship of Japan, the sole non-American producer of PAC-3 interceptors—is real and necessary, but slow. Every euro spent on European interceptors is one less dollar earned in Washington, and one fewer armament President Trump can delay.
Because Europe cannot buy its way out of those technical bottlenecks overnight, it must lean aggressively into the financial and maritime levers it controls today. The E.U.’s €90 billion loan covers 2026 and much of 2027, and when the remaining €70 billion gap comes to a head at the December European Council, moving the €202 billion in frozen Russian assets out of Belgium offers the clearest route around Belgium’s objections. Better still, a full ban on shipping services for Russian crude, along with expanding the shadow-fleet boardings that European navies have already begun, could squeeze Moscow’s war chest at almost no cost to European taxpayers.
The lesson of the lever
A bitter paradox governs the current battlefield. The offensive campaign squeezing Moscow is the one Washington objects to, while the defenses faltering over Ukrainian cities are the ones only the U.S. can supply. By blaming Kyiv for an energy shock originating in the Persian Gulf, the White House has struck a bargain that lowers no prices at home, replenishes the aggressor’s coffers abroad, and teaches the Kremlin that American sanctions expire if Putin simply waits them out. Such a posture delivers neither peace nor strength.
The silver lining is that Washington’s attempted coercion is forging the European autonomy it assumed would never materialize. If European leaders withstand Russian pressure over the next 18 months and resist the political disarray stoked by Kremlin disinformation, the continent will emerge a far more formidable power—proving the quip circulating in allied capitals that Europe has found no better unifier since Charlemagne than Donald Trump. Europe, Ukraine, and the world now know what an American guarantee is worth when the guarantor changes its mind, and Washington is about to learn that leverage, like interceptors, is a stock that depletes with every use.
As Mark Twain advised, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”
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