Then-U.S. President Donald Trump (right) meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin in July 2017 at the G20 Summit in Hamburg, Germany.
Associated Press
Iowa farmers are paying record prices to bring in this year’s crop. Diesel hit a record $6.31 a gallon in September, and AAA puts Iowa’s average at about $6.16, up roughly 80% from a year ago. The Iowa Corn Growers Association has asked Iowa’s congressional delegation for help with diesel costs. So it is understandable that many welcome any extra supply.
But the deal the White House struck with Vladimir Putin will not bring that relief to Iowa, and it will help fund Russia’s needless and brutal war that is killing civilians in Ukraine every night.
A treasury license now lets Russian diesel into the United States for six months, and Russia says its first 40,000-metric-ton tanker will sail within days. Energy experts doubt the Russian fuel will bring relief at all, given how short the supply is after the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz.
What the Trump-Putin diesel deal does deliver is cash for the Kremlin. Oil money pays for the missiles and drones that, on Oct. 19, killed six people, including children, in a park in the Kharkiv region. In October, Putin met President Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and agreed to resume peace talks; hours later, Russian missiles struck Kyiv again.
This is not a partisan view. Six Republican and six Democratic senators told the president the deal “is a gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our Allies,” will offer “limited to no relief to Americans,” and “should be rescinded.” Iowans are asking the same question: what do we get out of it?
There is also a legal question. In 2022, Congress banned Russian energy imports, 100 to 0 in the Senate and 413 to 9 in the House, and the law lets the president lift the ban only by certifying that Russia has agreed to end hostilities under a deal Ukraine accepts. Lawmakers in both parties argue the diesel license violates it; the administration says it is acting within its authority.
As Ukrainians, we know how a dictator uses energy as a weapon. Russia has done it to its neighbors for decades via one-sided trade agreements and price and supply manipulation, and now every night, Russia attacks our power plants directly. Americans, too, know what happens when oil is used as a weapon: the 1973-74 embargo by oil producers, which the Federal Reserve’s own history says complicated the fight against inflation, hit the economy at what the Fed’s chairman called “a most inopportune time,” as the country slid into a recession.
Iowa already makes much of its own energy. Wind produced nearly two-thirds of the state’s electricity in 2025, the highest share of any state. Iowa also leads the nation in biodiesel, with eight plants able to make more than 400 million gallons a year, about a fifth of national capacity, yet its plants made only 266 million gallons in 2025, the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association says.
Cheaper, locally made power is also more secure, in both Ukraine and Iowa. Wind and homegrown fuel do not depend on a foreign power or dictator’s goodwill, cannot be switched off from Moscow, and arrive with no tanker of Russian fuel attached. Iowa can be part of the cheaper, more resilient, locally generated solutions that are already winning, instead of rewarding Putin’s brutality with blood-money purchases from Russia.
If lower prices are the goal, Washington should rescind the license, enforce the law Congress wrote, and back the Iowans who grow and build our energy. Putin’s diesel will not ease the harvest bill. It will raise the price Ukrainians pay.
Dr. Svitlana Romanko is the founder and executive director of Razom We Stand, a Ukrainian-led organization working to cut off the Russian fossil fuel revenues that fund the war. Jason Kirkpatrick is a former vice mayor of Arcata, California.