Published on: 13.10.2026 | Author: Sergey Petrov – Aradzhioni
Diesel, drones and deterrence
By Sergey Petrov – Aradzhioni
The past two weeks have compressed months of signals into days. Taken one at a time, each event looks manageable. Taken together, they describe a war that is not ending but spreading at its edges, and a Western response shaped as much by domestic politics as by strategy.
A deal too small to matter
On 9 October Donald Trump announced that Russia would supply the United States with diesel: about 300,000 tonnes in October, 500,000 in November and 1 million in December, with a further 3 million tonnes promised later, depending on the state of Russian refineries. The US Treasury issued a general licence allowing the imports until 7 April 2027. The White House sold the deal as relief for American farmers, ranchers and truckers.
The arithmetic says otherwise. The first three tranches, 1.8 million tonnes, equal roughly 13 million barrels: about three days of US distillate consumption, which the Energy Information Administration puts at 4.1 million barrels a day. Even the full 4.8 million tonnes would cover barely nine days. Diesel is priced on a global market, and a few tankers will not move it.
There is also the question of whether the fuel exists. Russia banned diesel exports in July, and its exports of diesel and gasoil fell to about 190,000 barrels a day in the third quarter, from 850,000 in the first. For the first time, Russia even imported diesel. A pledge of millions of tonnes from a damaged refining system is a promise, not a supply.
Who the deal is really for
The answer lies in the US calendar. Americans vote on 3 November for all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 in the Senate. Diesel hit a record national average of $6.52 a gallon in September, more than double a year earlier. Forecasters now make the Democrats clear favourites for the House and slight favourites for the Senate. A headline about cheaper fuel is worth more to the White House than the fuel itself.
The deal also sits awkwardly with Washington’s own policy. Only last month Mr Trump signed a sanctions law authorising 100% tariffs on the largest buyers of Russian energy. Now the Treasury is licensing Russian diesel into the United States.
Shifting the blame
The fuel crisis has an obvious origin: the US-Israeli war on Iran that began in February, and Tehran’s near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas normally passes. Yet on 10 October Mr Trump blamed Volodymyr Zelensky, accusing him of creating problems for American farmers by striking Russian refineries. “I suggest they get a new leader who can make a deal,” he said. “It’s time for Ukraine to get a new president.”
Kyiv answered at once. Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Mr Zelensky “has the support of the Ukrainian people, and they have the right to decide.” Mr Zelensky called the diesel deal “a weak decision by strong partners”.
What Moscow gets
The real prize for Russia is not dollars but respite. Ukraine’s Defence Ministry claims its drones have disabled 51% of Russia’s refining capacity, a figure that cannot be independently verified. The International Energy Agency estimates Russian diesel output is down by about 30%. Vladimir Putin himself conceded the strikes have cost Russia around 1% of GDP.
On 11 October, two days after the diesel deal, Mr Trump announced an “energy ceasefire” effective immediately. Mr Zelensky said he learned of it from the post, and that Ukraine would stop hitting refineries only if Russia stopped attacking Ukraine’s power grid, with “real guarantees”. On paper the bargain is symmetrical. In practice it would remove Kyiv’s most effective lever on the Russian economy just before winter, while Russia keeps the initiative on the front line. The diesel will barely touch world prices. The ceasefire could change Russia’s war economy.
The war reaches Bulgarian waters
All this is unfolding as the Black Sea war spills westwards. On 6 October drones struck two cargo ships about 70 nautical miles east of Byala, inside Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone. The Togo-flagged Alfa Watan sank; the Palau-flagged Able caught fire and its 18 crew were evacuated. It was the first known attack of its kind in Bulgarian waters. Prime Minister Rumen Radev called it unacceptable but said the Russian ambassador would be summoned only if Russian responsibility were proven.
A week later, on 13 October, it happened again, and closer to shore. The Ukrainian-owned Chelsea 3 was hit 18 nautical miles east of Byala; all 15 crew were rescued. A second vessel sank 17 nautical miles east of Krapets, with one survivor. Mr Radev admitted Bulgaria lacks “solid and clear evidence”, but said the logic of events pointed to the Russian Federation, and summoned Ambassador Eleonora Mitrofanova.
The timing matters. Bulgaria elects a president on 25 October. Mr Radev, who resigned the presidency in January to lead his new party, Progressive Bulgaria, now governs with the country’s first single-party majority since 1997. His caution after the first attack invites two readings: evidentiary prudence, or reluctance to alienate Russia-friendly voters mid-campaign. Either way, the lesson is the same. Ambiguity invites repetition, and within a week the strikes moved from 70 to under 20 nautical miles from the coast.
This is how Moscow has operated throughout the war. It probes, measures the response and, when there are no consequences, comes back and goes further. Drones in Polish and Romanian airspace, sabotage and severed cables in the Baltic all followed the same pattern: each unanswered step became the new baseline. For Bulgaria, the message of the past week is that hesitation is not neutral. It is read in Moscow as permission.
An unusually blunt NATO
On 12 October NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Alexus Grynkewich, told a security conference in Warsaw that the alliance would destroy “anything and everything” that supports and controls an attacking force. “If someone is foolish enough to attack us, we will fight,” he said. He did not name Russia. But the Wall Street Journal reported that NATO’s plan includes long-range strikes on Russian command posts and air defences in the Kaliningrad region, near St Petersburg and in Belarus.
Supreme commanders rarely describe their theory of victory in public. When they do, it is deterrence by communication: a signal that the alliance treats the risk as real.
Escalation, or exhaustion?
Scepticism about a wider war is understandable. But on 16 February 2022, Russia’s foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova mocked Western warnings, asking for “the schedule of our upcoming invasions for the year. I’d like to plan my holidays.” Days earlier she had told Italian television that “only crazy people, devoid of morals, can assume that Russia intends to attack Ukraine.” Eight days later the tanks rolled.
There are also strong arguments against escalation. In the war’s fifth year Russia is still taking ground in small, costly increments. Its economy has effectively stagnated since mid-2024; the government plans growth of 1.3% in 2026, VAT has risen to 22%, and defence and security absorb 38% of federal spending. A Moscow that is struggling to grind down Ukraine is poorly placed for a war with NATO. Nor would such a war suit Mr Trump, who has promised since the spring of 2023, when he was still a candidate, to end the fighting within 24 hours. A conflict drawing in the alliance would be the definitive failure of that promise, and a Democratic House would have every incentive to make him pay for it.
Europe, meanwhile, is rearming late. Many governments announced national rearmament plans before Brussels acted, from Poland’s push towards the top of NATO’s spending table to Germany’s 2025 decision to exempt defence from its constitutional debt brake. The EU has added its own instrument, the €150 billion SAFE loan scheme for joint procurement, adopted in May 2025. But SAFE is a tool for the coming years, not for the coming months: contracts, factories and deliveries take time, and its effect on actual capabilities will be felt only gradually. In a crisis, the burden would fall on a handful of states, from Poland and the Nordics to France and the UK, while others lack the means to contribute fully.
The asymmetry of pain
One factor is often underestimated. Democracies make hardship visible: people strike, protest and vote, and every grievance becomes a target for foreign influence operations. Russia has criminalised that visibility. Human rights group OVD-Info recorded 6,440 detentions at anti-war protests in the first week of the full-scale invasion alone; since then, dissent has been all but silenced, even as living standards have been subordinated to the war machine. The absence of protest in Russia measures repression, not consent, but it does give the Kremlin room to absorb pain that a democratic government could not. Ukraine’s own resilience shows the gap is not destiny.
What to watch
No analyst can say whether escalation or diplomacy will prevail. The most likely path is neither a grand war nor peace, but calibrated escalation: drones, sabotage and probing, pushed as far as the West allows. That makes the West’s choices decisive. Bulgaria and its allies need faster attribution and joint maritime surveillance of the western Black Sea. And Washington should not trade away Ukraine’s leverage for a three-day supply of diesel and a pre-election headline.