Is the US abandoning Ukraine?

A man clears debris at the site of an air attack in Kyiv on October 19, 2026, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. | Oleksii Filippov/AFP via Getty Images This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day.

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You can’t quite say that President Donald Trump is “turning” on Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, because he never truly seemed to have Zelenskyy’s back.

There was that time Trump panned Zelenskyy as a “modestly successful comedian.” Or that excruciating meeting where Trump and Vice President JD Vance harangued Zelenskyy for inadequately “thanking” them.

But over the past week, Trump has dropped even the meager niceties he sort of faked before.

On Monday, he blamed Zelenskyy for failing to end Russia’s invasion…and suggested it was time for “somebody else” to take over negotiations.

Three days earlier, he delayed a package of tariffs and other sanctions designed to pressure Russia to end its four-year onslaught in Ukraine.

And a week before that, Trump announced — after an apparently chummy phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin — that the US would reopen its market to Russian diesel, reversing a ban imposed shortly after the invasion.

Go a little deeper View Link All this diplomatic whiplash comes as Russia continues to bombard Ukraine with drone and missile strikes, killing hundreds of civilians in September alone and leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power.

The first two weeks of October ranked among the deadliest periods for civilians in the country since 2022, according to UN monitors.

But while those escalating strikes threaten both human lives and long-standing international norms around territory and sovereignty — norms that actually matter quite a lot to American security, long-term — there’s another issue that Trump is more concerned with right now: Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries.

Those strikes drive up the cost of gas, and those prices are, of course, of profound concern to American voters , who are paying near- record highs for gasoline and diesel fuel (…primarily due to the war in Iran , I am obliged to note).

More than any other issue, high living costs threaten to hamstring the GOP in next month’s midterm elections.

Trump has, perhaps predictably, pursued a Russia policy that he says could ease prices at home.