EditSeoul’s diesel, Pyongyang’s troops, and Trump’s request to spare Russia’s fuel
South Korea, a U.S. ally, is selling diesel and jet fuel to Russia, helping Moscow to wage a war in which North Korea is a co-belligerent
Russia, for years one of the world’s great diesel exporters, has been buying the fuel from South Korea. Ship-tracking data published in August showed traders loading nearly 30,000 metric tons of refined products at Ulsan in late July and sending them to Russia’s Far East. Sources told Reuters the cargoes included diesel, and one said jet fuel as well. A September report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air said Moscow had also had to take fuel from Turkey and to buy back gasoline refined from its own crude in India, as Ukrainian strikes “turned the tables” on a country that used to ship diesel out, not in. Seoul’s trade ministry declined to comment.
The volumes are small next to Russia’s old export machine. The politics are not.
South Korea is formally on Ukraine’s side. It has sent humanitarian aid, tightened sanctions, and treated Russia’s war as a threat to the same order that keeps North Korea in check. North Korea, meanwhile, has sent troops and missiles to fight with Russia against Ukraine. So a democracy that calls itself Ukraine’s partner is helping refill the tanks of an army that is being reinforced by that democracy’s existential enemy. The cargoes appear to have moved through traders rather than as a declared government programme. That distinction matters for lawyers. It does not remove the contradiction.
The shortage itself is not mysterious. Ukraine has spent months hitting Russian refineries and fuel sites, arguing that diesel and gasoline keep the invasion running. Moscow responded by banning most diesel and gasoline exports, which pulled Russian barrels out of a market already squeezed by war in the Gulf. U.S. retail diesel recently passed $6 a gallon. Europe has been hunting cargoes from as far as South Korea. The same Korean refiners who can fill a hole in Russia’s Far East are also sending diesel on rare 12,000-mile voyages toward northwest Europe. The war has scrambled the map: Russia imports, Korea exports in every direction, and prices do the rest.
That is the setting for Donald Trump’s remark on 13 September. Speaking at his golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland, and again on Air Force One, he said he had asked Volodymyr Zelenskyy to “stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia.” There were “plenty of other targets,” he said. Hitting diesel was “hurting the world.” He blamed the global squeeze on Ukraine’s campaign, not on his own deeds in the Middle East. He did not, in those comments, ask Vladimir Putin to stop the war that made the campaign rational from Kyiv’s point of view. Ukraine treats refineries as military targets; Russia has spent years striking Ukraine’s grid. Trump treated diesel as a consumer good that should be fenced off from the battlefield.
Put the three facts in one frame and the strangeness is obvious. Ukraine blows up Russian refining capacity to raise the cost of the war. Russia, short of fuel, buys diesel from South Korea. South Korea is supposed to be aligned with Ukraine and is simultaneously watching North Korean soldiers fight for Russia. The American president then asks Ukraine to ease off the very target that created the shortage – because American truckers and a tight world market are paying the price.
None of this requires a grand conspiracy. Traders follow price gaps. Seoul can sanction Moscow and still have barrels leave Ulsan if the paperwork runs through intermediaries. Trump can want a deal with Putin and cheaper diesel at home at the same time. The result is still a war in which alliances, energy flows and talking points no longer line up.
This text draws on an article by EUalive’s partner Siol.net.
Caption: Cars line up at a Rosneft gas station in Moscow, Russia, 9 July 2026. A fuel crisis in Russia, caused by attacks on refineries, has led to shortages in more than half of the regions and a sharp rise in prices at gas stations. The government has imposed a complete ban on fuel exports and permitted the circulation of Euro-3 gasoline. Gasoline prices in Russia increased by 2.11 percent from 30 June to 6 July, while diesel fuel prices increased by 3.35 percent, according to Rosstat. EPA/SERGEI ILNITSKY
Updated: September 14, 2026 - 09:56
