I think Putin may have found a way to get US support against Ukraine.
Ukraine better stop the Russian refinery attacks. Otherwise Ukraine will be seen as the obstacle for Trump’s diesel imports and lower US prices.
I hate to admit it. Putin pulled a master stroke idea. Trump sees lower diesel prices as the way to garner support for Republicans.
No will buy this but Trump and his MAGA cult. Ukraine should keep up the attacks as they are obviously working.
What happens when Trump supplies Russia weapons?
He will sell out Ukraine in a heartbeat for cheap oil.
Trump’s a nutball. His actions have nothing to do with his words and can’t be predicted. Ukraine should fight their war the best they can without trying to anticipate the moves of a demented clown.
And there is no cheap oil anyway. Russia can’t supply their own people with oil, much less the US. The diesel “deal” is about PR and markets and politics, not about actual diesel.
The volumes in question are not enough and the US has no pull over Ukraine. This is not going to do anything.
Where would the tankers have to drop anchor to load up? How would they be flagged and what navy will safeguard their passage?
I thought we had an embargo and sanctions? 
But we just stole… err. seized a bunch of oil…
HAVANA, Oct 7 (Reuters) - The US said on Wednesday it had seized 90 separate shipments of biodiesel bound for Cuba worth nearly $3 million, the second time in a week US authorities have announced the seizure of “illegal” fuel en route to the island nation.
You also have a traitor in the White House. And the sanctions have been “eased”, for the benefit of Mr. P and Mr. T.
That is about 33,000US$ per seizure, which at the current diesel prices means way less than 10,000 gallons. That is about the volume a tank truck transports. I would have thought a medium sized ship carries that much just to navigate around. Do they leave them empty and drifting away?
I hope they at least sell the tripulation as slaves, anything else would be leaving money on the table. /s
Or make them join the U.S. Navy or walk the plank, that’s the tradition in those waters!
But doesn’t Canada export more diesel than they use? And wouldn’t it be cheaper to pipe it to the United States than to ship it in ships?
From what I understand, so does the US! So a million barrels a day are still going out and they’ll be replaced by tens of thousands of barrels (note that Trump’s figures are in tons because that sounds bigger) coming in, assuming Russia even has the means to ship it in the first place. It would be comical if Russia loaded up ships in the Black Sea and they were duly sunk by Ukraine.
It sickens me to even ponder the idea, but wouldn’t the obvious route be for Russia to load up said diesel in Vladivostok and send to say, the port of Los Angeles or some other place on the west coast?
I suspect Vladivostok is far from the refineries and I know there is no easy way to move diesel from the west coast to the rest of the US.
I don’t think anyone will buy this except for MAGA. And the truth is that MAGA are already pro-Russian for the most part. It was weird seeing both my MAGA and extreme leftest acquaintences posting the same Russian propaganda online in the months leading up to the start of the war.
Ha! He’s selling out the United States, so of course he’ll sell out Ukraine.
I don’t think the latter is that much a problem since it’s only a performative amount of diesel anyway. People who would overlook the size would also overlook the location.
I don’t know if it would be easier to get the diesel from Vladivostok or not, since it the entire region had fewer refineries before the war but also is farther away from Ukrainian drones that hit the refineries closer to Ukraine.
I’m not sure Trump would be okay with only blue states getting an (admittedly minuscule) price cut at the pump.
In a rare bit of good news, social media has become a little less infested with pests as Ukrainian strikes against Russia datacenters have knocked Russia’s troll army for a loop:
Yay! that is good news.
French, Belgian, and Dutch supermarkets have been hacked. The attack started in Denmark, where a firm run outdated software. This attacked fridges:
The supermarkets’ refrigeration systems were compromised, causing them to automatically enter defrost “Defrosting (refrigeration)”) mode while fully stocked, some multiple times. Temperatures in some refrigerators climbed up to 50°C (122°F) within six hours. Refrigerated stock was spoiled, and in some locations, fires were sparked by the overheated machinery.
the fridges were internet exposed, and used the username admin with a password that automatically changed to the current date.
It is anticipated that the total damage shall reach millions of euros.
Now tell me Russia is not behind those repeated pinprick attacks.
It is also about time people stop using admin as username and trivial passwords. It just makes me mad.
I’d be willing to take 1 to 100 odds that they are (betting 1.00 to get 1.01). What frustrates me is that Europe, and to an even greater extent the US, don’t ramp up their actions against Russia. We should all be supporting Ukraine, not just for their sake, but for ours.
Take the recent bombing mentioned above, where Ukraine took out the servers that run Russian bots on social media. I don’t know how quickly Russia will be able to get those bots back up and running, but something like that has the potential to help the sane folks in the west, Democrats in the US, non AfD in Germany, etc., win more elections. That’s a huge favor that Ukraine has done the world, which should be repaid with even more support for Ukraine, not by more sitting on the sidelines.