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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
On the night before the talk with Trump, Ukraine struck the Moscow refinery. Zelensky did not hide this—quite the opposite, he listed what was targeted: “Flamingo,” “Pelican,” “Palyanytsia,” “Lutyi” and another fifty names. All of them were ours.
A week ago, Trump on his golf course asked Zelensky for one thing: not to hit Russian diesel, because fuel in America is getting more expensive. The strike against Moscow happened. The meeting after that did not vanish—it appeared. On Sunday evening Zelensky wrote that he had agreed with Trump on a meeting in New York and that it could change many things.
The interesting thing is not that the meeting will happen. The interesting thing is that it became necessary exactly now.
Even on Saturday Zelensky was not on Trump’s list of bilateral meetings on the margins of the General Assembly, and the American president in New York was less than two days away. But the line in the schedule is secondary here. Whether the meeting appears or not appears is not because aides failed to reach it, but because of how much it costs the person who agrees to it.
And it costs more now than in the spring. Kyiv comes not with a plea for sympathy, but with an invoice in which each item is personally approved by Trump. Interceptors against ballistic missiles—Zelensky said outright that we need ballistic missiles packages from the Americans. The Graham law signed a day before the talk—right to tariffs up to 100% against buyers of Russian oil, a right that by itself does not operate. Mutual pause on energy strikes—is something Trump had already announced on his social networks, but never obtaining any Moscow-like consent.
And the position from which this bill is presented has changed. The reach that hit the Moscow refinery is Ukrainian: it does not need to be coordinated with anyone, and stopping it can only be achieved by appeal. On the Liman direction the Third Army Corps of Biletsky completed the second stage of the Violàdi operation—with 125 square kilometers and several settlements, according to their data.
And Kushner last week in Kyiv himself said that the territorial positions of the sides depend on the dynamics on the front. With this argument, the line drawn in Moscow can now be moved back.
For Trump, an awkward arithmetic emerges. Imposing tariffs would raise prices at American gas stations 6 weeks before the congressional elections, so he split the signing and implementation over time. Providing interceptors—giving away a scarce commodity that others in different theaters want.
The only thing he asked Kyiv for, however, was to stop strikes on diesel fuel, i.e., to surrender the lever that made the Kyiv conversation important. A meeting where all this comes together in one table—a meeting where one must answer specifically, not in general about peace.
Whether the White House is deliberately dragging with the bilateral agenda, or it’s a usual procedural delay, is not visible from open data.
But the conclusion does not depend on this. Ukraine’s weight in New York is created not in New York, but on the Liman direction and at the Russian refineries. And here there is a symmetry with which we must live: our strongest card and the main subject of American requests are the same thing. Therefore in our hands is not the meeting’s agenda, but the single decision: not to give up this card before someone pays for it.
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