After Russian diesel deal, Trump faces new crisis over Ukraine

President Donald Trump’s new diplomatic crisis over Ukraine first erupted at Steve Witkoff’s exclusive golf club outside Miami on Friday.

Senior Ukrainian and European officials had traveled to the club, Shell Bay, for talks with Trump’s peace envoys, Witkoff and Jared Kushner. They had planned to discuss updated proposals to end the war in Ukraine before another trip to Russia by Witkoff and Kushner.

But Witkoff and Kushner soon made an announcement that stunned the visitors and much of the world when the news became public shortly thereafter. The United States, the Americans said, would suspend sanctions on Russian diesel fuel. The Americans added a firm request from Trump: that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil refineries.

One of the Ukrainians asked what they would get in return.

The Americans responded that the United States was doing a lot for Ukraine already, according to three people familiar with the meeting, and should not have to make a trade for Ukraine to stop its refinery attacks. The Americans then mentioned U.S. intelligence assistance, considered vital to the Ukrainian war effort.

Some in the room heard that as a veiled threat, according to two of the people. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, denied any suggestion of a threat to withhold such support. But the official also said that Trump had grown so angry with Ukraine that it was hard to say what he might do.

Now, the dispute has ballooned into the biggest crisis between Washington and Kyiv since the Oval Office blowup with Ukraine’s president last year. The future of U.S. support for Ukraine again appears to be hanging in the balance. The escalating back-and-forth showed how Trump’s efforts to bring down energy prices before next month’s midterm elections have threatened to destabilize the fragile Ukraine talks.

Witkoff and Kushner are now indicating that they have put their expected trip to Russia on hold until Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky mends fences with Trump, two people familiar with the talks said.

The meeting Friday at Witkoff’s golf club lasted about six hours, two people familiar with it said. Much of the meeting involved brainstorming about what the future peace talks might require to work, and the focus was on the standard issues, according to several people. The issues included accession to the European Union for Ukraine, for instance, and the question of territorial control.

Witkoff stepped out at one point to join a call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump, according to one of the people, who was in the room for the meeting. In addition to Ukraine’s three-person negotiating team, the national security advisers to the leaders of Britain, Germany, and France, as well as top officials from the European Union and NATO, joined the meeting.