Trump lifts sanctions on Russian diesel, tells Ukraine to get a new president for objecting

…(cont) Back up a day, the thirteenth, at the golf course in Doonbeg. Zelensky has to do one thing, he says: he has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia. On the fifteenth he says it again, near enough word for word that two newspapers ran the same sentence twice. And the Friday before all that, diesel in this country goes past six dollars a gallon, a record.

Then comes the twenty-first, and I apologize for the detour, but it's his own sentence. He writes that Russia has unfortunately lost control of its diesel oil industry due to its war with Ukraine. Due to *its* war. Who does the possessive there belong to?

The first of October: Kyiv hits an oil facility in Samara. The Guardian prints that analysts claim the war in Iran is what's driving prices, and that the strikes are a headache for him before the midterms. The same day, Britain is on the phone with the European Commission, Germany, France, Italy and Ireland about drawing down their emergency diesel reserves, because the administration told them to and because he'd threatened to cut off American supply.

Friday: the sanctions come off Russian diesel. Putin commits 300,000 tons immediately and nearly five million tons in all. Saturday morning, Zelensky calls that an investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged — absolutely terrible, not fair and not honest. Saturday afternoon, outside the White House: he could have settled this war many times and chose not to, he wants to make problems, time for Ukraine to get a new president. CBS notes this came after Russian strikes killed at least twenty people in Ukraine, three of them children.

Here's where I get stuck, and it's my street, not theirs.

Last winter somebody was taking gasoline out of the cars on my block with a hose. A can at a time, overnight, for weeks. My dog never once barked, which tells you everything about the dog. By February mine won't turn over and I'm walking to Tedesco's on the corner for coffee, and the only man on the block with gas to spare is selling it out of his own garage. Twelve dollars a can, cash, no receipt. I bought two. I'm not proud of that.

And across the street there's Mr. Pell, seventy-one years old, out on the porch all night with a flashlight on his knee trying to catch whoever's doing it. The whole block got sore at Pell. He's making a commotion out there. Somebody ought to tell him to quit.

So let me ask it the dumb way. When I handed over the twenty-four dollars, which of those two men — the one in the garage or the one on the porch — had done something about the price of gasoline on my street? And once that can was empty, which of them had a reason to run the hose again?

Oh — you've got your hand on the door, I know, just one thing. The Washington Examiner has him asking for a new leader who can make a deal. And the Times says that hours after the United States said it would buy that diesel, the Kremlin said there'd be no immediate resumption of talks to end the war. So somebody did make a deal on Friday. I've got it here somewhere, the signing. Could you read me back who it was with?