The first oil tankers scheduled to deliver Russian diesel to the US under a deal between President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin have changed course and are no longer heading toward the US coast. It spells the end of an agreement announced with great fanfare before the midterms.

Issued on: 06/11/2026 - 14:38

The Agioi Fanendes, an oil tanker loaded with 40,000 metric tons of diesel, represents US President Donald Trump’s last chance to see his controversial diesel deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin come to fruition.

The deal was reached last month, ahead of the November 3 midterm elections, amid soaring fuel prices and a cost of living crisis in the US. It failed to prevent a thumping in the polls for the Republicans, with a “blue wave” carrying Democrats to a landslide victory across the country.

Read moreTrump strikes diesel deal with Putin, reversing years of pressure on Russia over Ukraine war

Now the deal designed to throw Trump a political lifeline is unravelling on the high seas.

The Maltese-flagged Agioi Fanendes is the first of three oil tankers to leave Russia – officially to deliver their precious cargo to the US – that is still heading toward the American coast, the Financial Times reported in an article published a day after the midterm elections.

The Talisman, a Russian oil tanker on international sanctions lists, departed from the St. Petersburg area on October 22. But after sailing through the English Channel, it turned south, skirted the Bay of Biscay and the Portuguese coast before entering the Mediterranean Sea through the Strait of Gibraltar.

The Leruo, also sanctioned by the EU, UK and US, continues its journey across the Atlantic but now has Brazil as its official destination as it sails southwest through the Atlantic.

Moscow has slammed the FT report as “fake” news. Kirill Dmitriev, a Kremlin envoy and negotiator, maintained Thursday that “Tankers destined for the US continue on course," in a post on X.

But when asked about the details of the shipments, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was a "commercial" matter that could not be made public. "All diesel will find its buyers," he added.

Trump met with Dmitriev at the White House on Thursday, while the senior Kremlin envoy was in the US for an event with first lady Melania Trump ahead of next week’s talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Abu Dhabi. The US president, however, declined to give reporters details of his meeting with Dmitriev.

Read moreMelania Trump urges 'enduring' ceasefire at meeting with Ukrainian, Russian officials

A ‘dead from the start’ deal

For the Agioi Fanendes, anything is still possible. Ship tracking data as of Friday listed its destination as awaiting “orders”. The tanker’s last position was received on October 28.

Just a few days ago, “it was expected in New York over the [November 7 - 8] weekend,” Matt Smith, an analyst at Kpler – a global provider of maritime data and analytics – told the FT. Smith believes there’s little doubt that the Agioi Fanendes, Trump’s last hope of seeing Russian diesel pour into US ports, will end up selling its diesel elsewhere – like the Talisman and the Leruo.

If this prediction holds true, “the diesel deal, for all practical purposes, is dead,” said Kevin Rowlands, a maritime security specialist at the Royal United Services Institute, a UK-based defence think tank. “It may theoretically remain in place. But in practice, I don't believe that any, or much, Russian oil or diesel will be channelled through the United States in the immediate future.” The route taken by these three oil tankers was “very shaky from the start”, he added.

Watch moreTrump’s use of Russian diesel fuel, at Ukraine’s expense, sparks controversy in the US

The diesel deal was announced with great fanfare on October 9 as a response to rising gas prices, with Trump declaring it would “Lower prices for Americans, especially our Great Farmers, Ranchers, and Truckers,” on Truth Social.

Shortly after Trump promised that Moscow would export “millions” of metric tons of Russian diesel to the US, the Treasury Department issued a regulation authorising US companies to purchase, deliver, offload and import Russian diesel despite existing US sanctions.

Following this presidential exemption, Moscow, for its part, lifted the ban on diesel exports, which had been imposed a few months earlier to address the fuel shortage in Russia caused by Ukrainian airstrikes on oil facilities.

And so the Agioi Fanendes, Leruo and Talisman were able to set sail … on the sly. It took the vigilance of NGOs such as Greenpeace and companies like Kpler to track and monitor these shipments.

A ‘victory for European policy-making’

Trump’s compromise on the diesel deal sparked an outcry in the US from both sides of the political spectrum. The economic logic behind an agreement set to bring in millions for Moscow failed to convince analysts. What’s more, the hundreds of thousands of metric tons of diesel promised “rapidly” by Russia were not enough to cover US needs for even a single day.

The arrival of the three tankers would, at the very least, have enabled Trump to declare that he was keeping his promises. The rationale for the decision to change course has stumped several analysts. “It’s hard to know the exact reason for this reversal,” admitted Maximilian Hess, founder of the consulting firm Enmetena Advisory and author of the critically acclaimed book, “Economic War: Ukraine and the Global Conflict Between Russia and the West”.

There may, in fact, be several explanations. The first relates to the risks for buyers of Russian diesel, despite Trump’s signed exemption. “The US president can sign an international agreement, but in enforcing it, the federal government may face resistance from certain governors,” noted Rowlands.

Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic governor of New Jersey, for instance, has threatened ports that accept Russian diesel with legal action and “millions of dollars” in fines. The Agioi Fanendes was originally scheduled to arrive at a port that falls partly under her jurisdiction. The Port of New York and New Jersey is in the New York-Newark metropolitan area and falls under the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's bi-state jurisdiction.

Underscoring this seeming discrepancy between presidential reach and gubernatorial power is the diversity of sanctions regimes against Russia currently in effect in the US. Opponents of the agreement maintain that the order signed by Trump does not apply to the 2022 Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act, which requires the president to obtain congressional approval before granting an exemption from sanctions on Russian oil.

"Then there is the UK and EU sanctions issue. It appears likely that the diesel on the initial two ships could not find an off-taker in the US who was willing to risk running afoul of these sanctions,” said Hess. The sanctions are triggered as soon as a European entity – an insurer, bank or any other intermediary – is involved in a transaction involving sanctioned oil. If that’s the case, Hess says the tanker diversions are a “victory for European policy-making and anti-circumvention measures”.

No reason to maintain the ‘illusion’

The shifting political climate in the US may have also played a role. “Moscow realised that Donald Trump had lost authority, and the midterm election results only confirmed that the risk of oil tankers being seized in US ports had risen sharply – something that would be unacceptable to the Kremlin,” said Rowlands. Governors like Mikie Sherrill would now be more inclined to override the wishes of a weakened president.

Finally, “it’s possible that these oil tankers never actually intended to go all the way to the US,” suggested Dirk Siebels, a maritime security specialist at Risk Intelligence. The purpose of Trump’s manoeuvre was “purely political – to try to drive down prices ahead of the midterm elections”, he noted. Images of oil tankers actually en route to the US served to send a concrete signal to the financial markets. In this scenario, the political benefit of aligning with Trump was well worth Moscow paying a little more for the detour to the US before diverting to the diesel’s actual destinations, such as Brazil.

“Once the election was over, and this effort had had no effect, there was no longer any reason to maintain this illusion,” said Rowlands.

Regardless of the reason, the oil tankers’ change of course represents the best possible outcome for everyone, according to Rowlands. The US avoids a new source of conflict between the president and the Democrats, the Russians will be able to sell their diesel elsewhere, and Europeans can rejoice at seeing the Trump diesel deal fizzle out.

(This is a translation of the original in French.)

Keywords for this article

The content you requested does not exist or is not available anymore.