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Oct 21, 2026
Russia will send its first diesel tanker to the US on Thursday under the agreement between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told reporters Wednesday, according to TASS and Prime. Novak did not name the port. He gave the tanker’s displacement as 40,000 tons and said additional shipments will follow. “We will meet the United States’ needs, to the extent of our capabilities,” RIA quoted him as saying, via Reuters.
Putin told US envoy Steve Witkoff on Wednesday that the first tanker, which he also put at 40,000 tons, would leave in two to three days and that others would follow one after another, VZGLYAD reported. Reuters quoted Putin as saying the “financial component should be provided.”
Trump said Oct. 9 that Russia would export more than 300,000 tons of diesel immediately, 500,000 tons in November and 1 million tons “immediately thereafter.” The Russian government partially lifted its diesel export ban the next day, effective Oct. 10, citing the Trump-Putin agreement and allowing 500,000 tons onto the world market in a first stage, Kommersant reported. Kpler’s Michelle Brouhard said Trump’s initial 300,000 tons works out to roughly 73,000 barrels per day over a month, which would probably not move global prices much, Reuters reported. US retail diesel has stayed above $6 a gallon since September, Reuters reported.
Putin said world diesel prices fell 5%-6% immediately after the announcement, Reform.news reported. Putin said Russia could also supply fertilizer to the US market “in large quantities,” and offered to help Washington deal with Iran, Reuters reported.
Since the diesel announcement, Ukraine has complained of disrupted intelligence sharing and of limits on its use of the Starshield satellite system, Reuters reported. Zelenskyy said a meeting with Witkoff in Oslo on Tuesday reached an agreement to resolve those issues.
Russian attacks overnight into Wednesday killed four people in Ukraine, officials said, and hit energy facilities in the Kyiv, Volyn, Odesa and Mykolaiv regions, Prime Minister Sergii Koretskyi said, Interfax-Ukraine reported. A drone struck a 24-story apartment building in Kyiv and killed two people. In Korotych, in the Kharkiv region, strikes killed an 81-year-old woman and an 83-year-old man and injured 11 people, including two children, according to regional officials.
Russia’s Defense Ministry said it hit a warehouse complex storing drones in Poltava, the Nivki substation in Kyiv, which it said supplies defense enterprises and logistics centers, and a cargo ship carrying military cargo to Odesa, Interfax reported. A week earlier, Russian strikes cut power to at least 600,000 people in Ukraine, Zelenskyy said.
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