US buys Russian diesel as Graham Act deadline nears

Washington: US President Donald Trump's deal to buy Russian diesel drew sharp scrutiny on American Sunday television, with anchors saying it clashed with a sanctions law he signed last month, a week before that law's deadline for tariffs that could hit India and other major buyers of Russian crude.

CNN's State of the Union host Jake Tapper said Trump hoped to reverse "skyrocketing fuel costs" by buying six million barrels of diesel, "barely enough to cover a day-and-a-half of U.S. demand".

He said Trump was "purchasing it from Vladimir Putin, despite signing a bill three weeks ago by the late Senator Lindsey Graham sanctioning countries that buy Russian oil".

On ABC's This Week, co-anchor Jonathan Karl said the deal "appears to violate a law Congress passed shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022". He did not name the law.

ABC also replayed part of Trump's September 2025 address to the UN General Assembly, in which he criticised European countries for buying Russian energy.

"They're buying oil and gas from Russia, while they're fighting Russia. It's embarrassing to them," Trump said in the clip.

"Of course, the president announced on Friday that the US now plans to do exactly the same thing," Karl said.

The law Tapper referred to, the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, was signed on September 18.

Section 113 of the Act requires the President, within 30 days of enactment, to raise duties to "up to 100 per cent" on all goods from countries that were among the five largest importers of Russian crude oil or natural gas in the preceding 12 months and that knowingly make new purchases on or after the 30-day mark.

That deadline falls on October 18.

Section 112 requires duties of up to 500 per cent, by the same date, on goods imported into the United States from Russia, explicitly including "petroleum products".

The law allows the President to waive any duty if he certifies to Congress that the waiver is in the US national interest. It also says nothing in it affects the Treasury's authority to issue new general licences, the tool used to authorise the diesel trade.

The administration has not said publicly how it will apply either section.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told ABC the diesel deal "gives Putin money and he spends money only on this war".

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, a Republican, defended it as "another example of our president thinking out of the box".

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, also a Republican, called his party's closing message "malpractice", summing it up as: "It's OK to sell, or to buy oil from a thug, KGB dictator in Russia that will use it to kill free Ukrainians.”

The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control issued General License 135 on Friday, authorising transactions involving Russian-origin diesel until April 2027. Trump has said Russia will initially supply more than 300,000 tonnes, followed by 500,000 tonnes in November and one million tonnes thereafter.

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