Former Ukrainian president Yushchenko urges Trump to reconsider Russian fuel trade

Yushchenko published the letter on Facebook in both Ukrainian and English.

“Money paid for Russian fuel is not an abstraction called ‘commerce,’” Yushchenko wrote in the English-language version. “It finances an economy geared toward total war. Russia needs resources to wage this unjust war and Ukraine is fighting to deprive Russia of those resources.”

The former president argued that calls for Ukraine to restrain attacks on Russian infrastructure overlook the role of energy revenue in sustaining Russia's military campaign.

“There is a profound moral difference between the aggressor and the nation defending itself,” he wrote.

Yushchenko also invoked the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine gave up the nuclear weapons stationed on its territory following the Soviet Union's collapse in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

“Ukraine kept its word. Russia broke its word,” he wrote.

He warned that the consequences of Russia's invasion extend beyond Ukraine, raising questions for other countries about the reliability of international security commitments.

The former president also drew parallels with US trade relations with Imperial Japan before World War II and recalled historical connections between Ukrainians and Americans, including Ukrainian-born US Marine Michael Strank, one of the six men who raised the American flag on Iwo Jima in 1945.

The letter comes after the Trump administration eased restrictions on Russian diesel exports. The move has drawn criticism from US lawmakers and coincided with reports that Washington threatened to restrict military support and intelligence sharing unless Ukraine stopped attacking Russian oil refineries.

Yushchenko concluded by urging Trump not to mistake Ukraine's desire for peace for a willingness to surrender.

“One does not negotiate with tyrants - one stops them,” he wrote.