Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday he expects the United States to lift additional sanctions on Russia, warning that President Donald Trump’s latest move only benefits Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin as Moscow intensifies attacks on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure.
Trump signed an executive order Friday waiving broad US sanctions on Russia’s energy revenues, a decision that landed the same day Russia launched strikes on 15 critical power generation facilities across Ukraine, in what Zelensky called one of the largest assaults yet on the country’s energy grid.
“Unfortunately, the lifting of sanctions will continue. I believe the ‘diesel deal’ is just the first step,” Zelensky told reporters, referring to an earlier arrangement Trump announced allowing Russian diesel exports in exchange for eased sanctions.
Zelensky said he still hoped personally that Trump would do “everything in his power” to push Putin toward ending the war, but he was blunt about the limits of that approach.
“You cannot achieve this by limiting Ukraine’s responses to Russia for killing our people. And certainly not by lifting sanctions.”
Russian air strikes on Saturday killed at least two people, according to Ukrainian officials. One person died and 22 others, including two children, were wounded in the southern city of Kherson. A second person was killed in the northeastern city of Sumy.
A targeted sanctions law, now paused
The sanctions measure Trump suspended, known as the Lindsey Graham Act after the senator who sponsored it, targeted Russia’s energy and defense sectors, Putin himself, and the so-called “shadow fleet” of tankers Moscow uses to dodge Western sanctions.
“It is important that everyone in America also sees what is really happening,” Zelensky wrote on social media, arguing the act “could have helped enormously — and still can!” He said it was meant to impose “truly effective pressure” on Russia to end the war.
“A U.S. sanctions blackout, easing pressure on the aggressor, financial rewards for Putin — all of this only encourages him to keep attacking.”
Zelensky said Russia is deliberately trying to knock out power and heat for millions of Ukrainians before winter sets in, and he called on allies to pressure Moscow to halt the campaign. Last winter, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians went without heat and electricity for extended stretches during freezing weather.
Moscow calls it historic
Neither the Kremlin nor Putin has publicly responded to Trump’s order, but Russian officials have praised it. Kirill Dmitriev, an envoy for Putin, called the suspension of the Graham Act “an important and truly historic moment.”
The war, now in its fifth year, has killed hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions since Russia’s invasion began.
