Zelenskyy Delivers a Defiant Message as Tensions With Trump Escalate
20m 18s
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has firmly rejected Donald Trump’s attempt to pressure Ukraine into a deal with Russia, rejecting claims that he should be removed from office. Trump’s sudden announcement of lifting sanctions on Russian diesel exports—without prior notice to Ukrainian or European delegations—has been widely condemned as a betrayal and a strategic blackmail tactic. Zelensky responded by activating urgent consultations with key European allies, including the UK, France, and Norway, to coordinate a unified response. Ukraine continues to strike Russian oil infrastructure, such as in Samara and Rostov, disrupting operations and undermining the feasibility of the proposed diesel deal. The Trump administration’s actions violate U.S. laws including the 2022 Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act and the 2017 KOTSA Act, which require Congressional review for such policy shifts. Additionally, Russia’s transfer of advanced drone and intelligence capabilities to Iran has significantly escalated regional threats, with Iran now possessing jet-powered Garen drones capable of evading Ukrainian defenses. U.S. officials, including Treasury Secretary Burisma, are under scrutiny for enabling the sanctions rollback, and federal employees involved in handling Russian diesel could face criminal prosecution. The broader context reveals that Trump’s energy deal is not a genuine economic move but a geopolitical maneuver to exploit Ukraine’s vulnerability and strengthen Russia’s influence, deepening concerns about U.S. foreign policy integrity and the long-term consequences of aligning with authoritarian regimes.
Ukraine's president Zelensky is not backing down after Donald Trump's latest threat that Trump wanted to see Zelensky remove from office. Donald Trump said Ukraine needs a new president who will do a deal with Donald Trump and Putin to essentially give all of eastern Ukraine over to Putin. So not only did Donald Trump cut a deal with Putin on Friday to import Russian diesel, a small amount of Russian diesel, which Trump is claiming is a massive amount, not only did Donald Trump blind side the Ukrainian delegation that was meeting with Whitcough and Kushner in Miami on Friday who had no clue that Trump was going to make this announcement. But Donald Trump said he wants to see Zelensky out of the presidency in Ukraine. So how did Zelensky respond? Well, Zelensky immediately called European allies. He spoke to the prime minister of Estonia. He spoke to the prime minister of the UK. He spoke with the leaders of France, Finland, Norway, European Union and others. They will be having an emergency meeting tomorrow on Monday. By the way, Estonia's prime minister echoed what we're hearing from Ukrainian officials turn Russian oil refineries into rubble. Let it burn is what the Estonian prime minister says notable because of Estonia's location bordering Russia. And also we're hearing this from top Zelensky officials as well. Also, Zelensky sent the following message to the Trump regime. Hey, he said Russia expressed its thanks for the lifting of sanctions on diesel exports by dropping five glide bombs on residential buildings in Zeprecia. As of now, sadly, 12 people have been confirmed killed in the Ukrainian city, including three children, my condolences to all their families and loved ones. And then Zelensky said, so what allowing Russia to sell oil product means was also heard most clearly in Kiev just now. When after repeated attacks on energy facilities with jet-powered Shahids, Russia launched a ballistic missile attack as well. Some of the missiles were intercepted. This once again clearly demonstrates Russia's true intention. They count on prolonging the war, terrorizing ordinary people and destroying infrastructure. We're seeing a lot of comments like this, even on state regime media fox reporting on all of this. Why are we buying oil from Russia who gives intelligence to kill our troops in Iran? Why are we buying oil from them? Life long Republican here voted for Trump three times. I'm with Zelensky. Trump's a coward and a traitor. And this mega Republican says just like Biden, I guess they have to blame Biden for everything. I voted for Trump and vote Republicans up and down the ticket. Buying from Russia is a huge mistake and very hypocritical. Also reports coming out yesterday, which we already knew we didn't need to see the reports because we could see what was happening in Turkmenistan. When you had Putin meeting with the president of Iran, Pazesky, and talking about all of their cooperation together, but the reports yesterday was that Iran has basically all of its ballistic capabilities and drone capabilities, perhaps even more than when the catastrophic war was launched by Trump and Netanyahu. And they've been getting a lot more technology and intelligence from Russia. And as we've been predicting here, because Iran Shahid drones were given to Russia, which upgraded them to the Garen for jet power drones. And then those Garen 5 hybrid kind of drone cruise missiles, which are very difficult for Ukraine to intercept, we believe that Iran now has those Garen 4, Garen 5 capabilities as well. So with Trump and Netanyahu now escalate against Iran again, which we should never have been involved in this catastrophic war in the first place, Iran has greater capabilities to strike back. Well, I would say at the US military bases, but all of those are destroyed. I would say the US aircraft carrier, but there's only one in the region right now, the George Washington, and it's far away a thousand kilometers back because it's scared of Iran's capabilities. But Iran could reach all of that, but Iran could reach all of the neighbors. And if you all thought that the Ansarala Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia were, you know, demonstrative of some of the capabilities. I mean, and those were devastating horrific strikes on the Riyadh King Khalid air base over there. That technology is a centilla of what the Iranian regime has right now as Donald Trump underestimates them because, oh, they've got nothing, they've got nothing that we've destroyed their army. I digress. How else is Zelensky responding? We'll take a look right here as Ukraine continues to pound down on Russian diesel and oil facilities. Take a look right here. Ukraine's general staff reported a third kamikaze drone strike on the Samara oil pumping station in Russia's Samara region notable 900 kilometers away from the front. So these FP1 FP2 drones, these long range drones of Ukraine continuing to strike. You'll see another image right here of the Samara oil pumping station in Russia's Samara Oblast right there. It's an important hub. One of the largest tank farms there is in Russia. Take a look right here what that looks like. Play this clip. Now two days ago we reported on the Rostov, on Don and the Rostov Iblast where the Nova Stinks oil terminal building was hit hard by Ukrainian drones. You can take a look at what this looked like over here. I mean, we're talking about a large amount of oil product coming out of there. Show you what this look like. Play this clip. And here's what it looked like yesterday during the day. Let's play it. Now as we noted, Selinsky has been working the phones. Emergency meetings are taking place. And I think it's pretty frickin clear now to all of the NATO nations that the Trump regime, you can't appease them. It's what I've always said. You know, you had Mark Rute, Mark Rute, the NATO Secretary General. Oh, Donald, you have made us much stronger than you were before. Thank you, Donald. I'm like, that crap is not going to work. And you know, Mark Rute may respond and say, well, look, I've been able to, you know, delay the inevitable for, you know, almost two years by doing this approach. So I bought us two years versus, you know, being overtly antagonistic to the Trump regime. And look, the US provides Ukraine with critical satellite imagery and Ukraine relies on a lot still. And so it'll be costs of the US role in NATO, because of the US post-World War 2 architecture. And because of the way every other president of the Donald Trump conducted themselves, the world relied on this. And then the world or the allies relied on this. And then they would help the United States economy in the US dollar, the petrodollar, the dollar in general was used throughout the world. That would make the United States richer, the bond market in the US benefit. The equity's markets here all benefited. But Donald Trump was like, oh, we're being taken advantage of everybody's taking advantage of us. And so now the world is recognizing once and for all. And to me, this is like, I think it's also linked as Donald Trump sees what's happening in the midterms, as he sees that what he thought was going to happen over these two years didn't happen. He wasn't able to seize all control over the United States. He wasn't able to subjugate we the people. So it's just kind of mask off. All right. I'm going to show everybody my true colors. And we all knew that this is what he was. We all knew he's a Putin bootlaker. I mean, that's that's just an objective reality of what it is. So Zelensky says I spoke with Prime Minister Burnham of the UK. He said I spoke to Jonas Carlstoy, the Prime Minister of Norway. He said I spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron. He spoke with Finland's president, Alexandra Stubbe.
And he spoke with all these people now. We're also getting more details about what went down at that Miami meeting. So you had on Friday, you had Whitcoff and Kushner meeting with the Ukrainian delegation. The Ukrainian delegation was not told anything about this Trump announcement slightly before just shortly before Trump made the announcement. They were told and they were with European allies there as well. And they couldn't believe any of it. Here's how it's being reported by the Kiev independent. When US envoys Whitcoff and Kushner told Ukraine's delegation on October 9th that Trump was preparing to lift sanctions on Russian diesel exports, the Ukrainian struggle to believe what they were hearing. It was not just our delegation there, but a European one as well said one senior your Ukrainian official told the Kiev independent one senior Ukrainian official told them it's just that everyone was sitting there looking like fools. And then this senior Ukrainian official said in a very kind of dark humor. I hope the Americans don't give the patriots to protect the refineries in Russia. Exclusive how it felt like a trap. How Ukraine was blindsided by Trump's Putin pivot. I wouldn't call it even a pivot. I mean, this is who he is all the time. This is who Donald Trump has always been. And the New York Times is also reporting that the Trump regime is offering a lot to Russia as well. In addition to this diesel deal, three major economic incentives to Russia, while Russia has given no concessions to the United States, releasing billions of dollars in frozen Russian sovereign assets, potentially reviving an earlier plan involving them to $100 billion, selling portions of Russia's oil giant luke oil to middle eastern investors, and some of Trump's mega billionaire buddies with business connections with Kushner and Whitcoff, allowing Belarus and ally of Russia to resume potash exports, sending huge amounts of money to Belarus as well. And Zelensky and the Ukrainian delegation are like, huh? Let's talk about what's happening here in the United States by partisan pushback already forming against the Trump Russian deal. Republican Congress member Fitzpatrick announced legislation, a discharge petition to block all Russian oil purchases. The Ronald Reagan piece through strength act will be forced to the house floor via a discharge petition. Fitzpatrick says, and it will pass overwhelmingly the bill directly targets Trump's October 9th deal with Putin for 300,000 tons of Russian diesel. And as I know before, 300,000 tons is like 2.2 million barrels. That's like what goes on one VLCC tanker. It's not like totally nothing, but it's not a significant amount of diesel that moves the needle in terms of the overall world diesel market. If you combined all of the purported diesel that's been Donald Trump claims Russia's going to export the U.S. has got to import. Let's just say it's all like the, what do they call 4.6, what do they say, 4.6 million tons, whatever the metric was. It's basically the equivalent of half of a day of world diesel consumption. And by the way, lots of people are pointing out because Zelensky so successfully struck a lot of Russian diesel facilities, 51% have been knocked off line that Russia doesn't even have surplus diesel capacity to fulfill this order. And so you'd be saying, well, why are they doing it? If it's such a little amount and Russia really can't fulfill it, why? Because it is a propaganda PR win for Putin, but deeper than the propaganda PR win, then Donald Trump tells Zelensky, which we saw all day yesterday, Russian refineries Zelensky, it's under Trump protection. It's a mafia tactics. We protect it, because we have a deal with the refineries now. So Zelensky, if you strike those refineries, when we have the deal for the Russian diesel and you strike those refineries, Zelensky, we blame you and then we use your strikes on the refineries as a pretext to withhold any remaining intelligence or any remaining aspect of US cooperation with Ukraine. And so that's what this is about. It's a way to kind of further blackmail and put a gun to Zelensky's head. I would say, actually, I would say quite literally to do that. There's also this data I want to point out as well, and I gave a legal analysis of this. So in 2022, there was a law passed public law 117 109 117th Congress in 2022 called the ending importation of Russian oil act. The ending importation of Russian oil act of 2022 prohibits the import of diesel into the United States unless the president submits to Congress a certification that Russia has agreed to withdraw from Ukraine, recognized Ukraine's sovereignty and poses no threat to NATO. So you need to submit a written certification, Donald Trump would to Congress in order to import Russian diesel. Clearly, that law has been violated, but it goes beyond that. There is another law that Trump enacted in 2017 called KOTSA, C-A-A-T-S-A, which stands for countering America's adversaries through sanctions. Act, it expanded sanctions on Iran Title 1, Russia Title 2, North Korea Title 3, and the key points that are Russia related is that it added Section 216 created a congressional review process. Before the president can terminate wave or take a licensing action that quote significantly alters the United States foreign policy with regard to the Russian Federation, the administration must submit a report to Congress. This starts a 30 calendar day review period. During the window, Congress can pass a joint resolution of disapproval to block the action and the proposed change generally cannot take effect until the review period ends. So you have two laws that the Trump regime violated. One, the ending importation of Russian oil act of 2022. Two, KOTSA, countering America's adversaries through sanctions act of 2017 passed under the Trump regime. Of course, then you also have the Lindsey Graham Sanctions Act, although that's forward-looking. That provides serious secondary sanctions against countries that basically import Russian diesel, so basically what we'd be sanctioning ourselves. So there's that aspect of it also. So it clearly goes against the intent of the Lindsey Graham Act. And then, of course, as I said before, there's all this reporting about how Russia's providing Iran with all of the intelligence and weapons that Iran is using against the tankers and that they can use against the US and that they used before. And so I wanted to give you that enough. So basically what does this mean? So when the Russian oil, so the Supreme Court gave Donald Trump absolute immunity, which is ridiculous. But Donald Trump can try to cite his absolute immunity. But Treasury Secretary Besent, he don't have absolute immunity. He could be criminally prosecuted for this now, in my opinion, because he issued a general license that withdrew these temporary license, that withdrew the sanctions against Putin for oil for a six-month period. And that's a violation of the law. It's a criminal act by Besent right there. I also want to point out that the license that was given to Putin is for a six-month period that ends on April 7th. And it's basically aligns with the six-month of Putin's birthday. It's why lots of people in Ukraine were like, "Look, it was literally a birthday gift to Putin by Donald Trump because it was a six-month birthday gift." Like you can literally time it from the 7th to the 7th, basically, is where it was supposed to end on the 7th, even though it ended up being a day or two afterwards. But that was the kind of plan behind it. But also the Customs and Border Patrol agents and anybody in CBP who brings in this Russian diesel, they could be criminally prosecuted now as well because they're violating the law. And so, when the oil and the diesel arrives, it's basically going to be stuck there. And if anybody handles it or touches it, now they can be criminally prosecuted. And so Donald Trump doing this and Besent going along with it now created this additional mess. I wanted to give you that context as well. So there you have it. Hit subscribe. Let's get to 7 million subscribers. We'll keep you posted on everything that's going on. Appreciate you. Before you go, our book WTF America is available for pre-order now. It's the story of how we got here and how we fight our way back. To pre-order,
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Podcast Summary
Key Points:
President Zelensky strongly rejects Donald Trump’s threat to remove him from office and accuses Trump of using a deal with Putin to blackmail Ukraine.
Trump’s announcement of lifting sanctions on Russian diesel exports, including a proposed 300,000-ton deal, was made without prior warning to Ukrainian or European delegations in Miami, leaving them blindsided.
Zelensky urgently contacted European allies—including the UK, France, Finland, Norway, and the EU—to convene an emergency meeting, emphasizing the danger of U.S. appeasement of Trump’s alignment with Russia.
Ukraine has launched targeted drone strikes on key Russian oil facilities, such as in Samara and Rostov, significantly disrupting Russia’s diesel production and demonstrating a strategic counter to Trump’s energy deal.
Trump’s proposed deal violates multiple U.S. laws, including the 2022 Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act and the 2017 KOTSA Act, which require Congressional approval for major shifts in sanctions policy.
Russia has been supplying Iran with intelligence and technology, including jet-powered Shahid drones (upgraded to Garen models), increasing Iran’s strike capabilities and threatening regional stability.
Ukrainian officials and allies view Trump’s actions as a calculated effort to destabilize Ukraine, using the energy deal as a political tool to pressure and intimidate Zelensky.
U.S. officials and Congress, including Republican member Fitzpatrick, are pushing back with legislation to block Russian diesel imports, citing legal violations and ethical hypocrisy.
Summary:
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has firmly rejected Donald Trump’s attempt to pressure Ukraine into a deal with Russia, rejecting claims that he should be removed from office. Trump’s sudden announcement of lifting sanctions on Russian diesel exports—without prior notice to Ukrainian or European delegations—has been widely condemned as a betrayal and a strategic blackmail tactic. Zelensky responded by activating urgent consultations with key European allies, including the UK, France, and Norway, to coordinate a unified response.
Ukraine continues to strike Russian oil infrastructure, such as in Samara and Rostov, disrupting operations and undermining the feasibility of the proposed diesel deal. S. laws including the 2022 Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act and the 2017 KOTSA Act, which require Congressional review for such policy shifts.
Additionally, Russia’s transfer of advanced drone and intelligence capabilities to Iran has significantly escalated regional threats, with Iran now possessing jet-powered Garen drones capable of evading Ukrainian defenses. S. officials, including Treasury Secretary Burisma, are under scrutiny for enabling the sanctions rollback, and federal employees involved in handling Russian diesel could face criminal prosecution.
S. foreign policy integrity and the long-term consequences of aligning with authoritarian regimes.
FAQs
Trump claimed he wants to see Zelensky removed from office and that Ukraine needs a new president who would make a deal with both Trump and Putin to hand over eastern Ukraine.
Zelensky immediately contacted European allies, including the UK, France, Estonia, Norway, and the EU, and called for an emergency meeting to address the threat.
Russia launched missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities and energy facilities, including residential bombings in Zeprecia that killed 12 people, including three children.
Ukrainian forces successfully struck Russian oil facilities, including a major pumping station in Samara and the Rostov-on-Don oil terminal, knocking 51% of Russian diesel capacity offline.
The deal violated the Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act (2022) and the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (KOTSA, 2017), which require congressional approval for significant changes in U.S. sanctions policy toward Russia.
The deal is seen as a propaganda move by Putin, a form of blackmail against Ukraine, and a violation of U.S. law and sanctions policy, with no real economic impact due to Russia's lack of diesel surplus.
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