A first tanker carrying Russian diesel to the United States under a new import agreement has set sail, the Kremlin said Friday, two weeks after President Donald Trump said he struck a deal with President Vladimir Putin despite Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“The first oil tanker has sailed off to customers, and regular supplies will continue,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said without elaborating.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said earlier this week that the first shipment would amount to 40,000 tons of diesel, according to Russia’s Interfax news agency.

Marine intelligence firm Kpler said the vessel was signaling it was headed to New York to arrive Nov. 7 and would be the first Russian diesel delivery to the United States since July 2023.

The abrupt reversal of U.S. sanctions policy on Russia over its invasion of its neighbor was seen as an attempt by Trump to address high fuel prices ahead of the midterm elections.

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Kyiv has offered to freeze the front line as Trump demanded, yet the pressure keeps landing on Zelenskyy, because Ukraine, wired into American systems, is the easier party to move.

America’s reset with Russia has begun, and nobody waited for the war to end first: a fortnight-long concessions bonanza and yet another round of shuttle diplomacy between Oslo and St Petersburg have delivered deals for Moscow and no breakthrough for Ukraine.

The order was supposed to run the other way: Moscow stops fighting, then Washington lifts sanctions and talks business. Instead the Treasury has licensed Russian diesel, Donald Trump has waived most of the Graham sanctions act, and his envoy has thanked Vladimir Putin for the fuel. Asked this week why he would meet Putin and Xi Jinping, Trump explained that “Russia, frankly, has been fine on Ukraine.”

Steve Witkoff’s flattery of the Russian leader could be just the start of a mendacious stratagem from a US president who says Moscow ‘has been fine on Ukraine’

They say the first casualty of war is truth. For the Trump administration, the road to peace with Russia now encompasses some extraordinary lies.

Steve Witkoff delivered one as he sat down with Vladimir Putin in his native St Petersburg on Wednesday, aiming to close the deal on Russia’s land grab in Ukraine with the White House’s strategy of maximum pressure on Kyiv and saccharine flattery of the Kremlin.

Russia unilaterally frees Stephen Hubbard after US request while Steve Witkoff praises Putin as a ‘humanitarian’

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Vladimir Putin ordered the release of an American from a Russian jail as he met Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg on Wednesday for fresh talks on ending the war in Ukraine, amid increasingly close relations between Moscow and Washington.

Trump had previously asked Putin to free Stephen Hubbard, a 74-year-old former teacher who had spent more than four years in Russian jails on charges of fighting as a mercenary for Ukraine.

The meeting comes after the US official held ‘constructive’ talks with Zelenskyy in Norway

Overnight, a handful of Republicans have spoken out against Donald Trump’s softening stance on Russia, threatening to pull financial support for his agenda over his “embarrassing” handling of the Ukraine war.

Don Bacon, an outgoing congressman in Nebraska, condemned Trump’s actions – which include a stunning agreement to buy Russian diesel and the pausing of sanctions on Moscow – as “absolutely disgraceful” and accused the US president of cozying up to a “war criminal” in Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart.