Ukraine Reclaims Donetsk Ground as Trump Hands Putin Diesel Deal

Ukrainian forces reclaimed additional territory in occupied Donetsk this week under an operation Kyiv has code-named “Vivaldi,” even as President Trump moved closer to Moscow’s position on the war and extended Russian President Vladimir Putin a diesel arrangement, according to Al Jazeera.

The battlefield gains came during a week Al Jazeera described as one in which Trump “sided with Russia” on the broader direction of the war, a shift that has unsettled Kyiv as it tries to hold ground against Russian forces without firm guarantees of continued American backing.

Front-line gains, political headwinds

Al Jazeera reported that Ukrainian units involved in Operation Vivaldi pushed Russian forces back from positions in Donetsk, one of the most heavily contested regions of the war, at the same time Washington’s public posture toward Moscow appeared to soften. The outlet tied the shift directly to the diesel arrangement Trump extended to Putin, though it did not detail the full terms of that deal.

The territorial advance lands against a backdrop of intensifying strikes on both sides. Russia hit nine Ukrainian regions this week, deepening strain between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, according to PBS, a dynamic detailed further in our earlier report on the nine-region strikes.

Energy war escalates alongside the ground war

Zelenskyy has said Ukraine will resume attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, and Ukrainian forces struck an oil refinery in Russia’s Ryazan region, according to Russian officials cited by OilPrice. Trump has publicly criticized the renewed refinery campaign, calling it a “disgrace,” a reaction covered in our report on Trump’s refinery-strike comments and in our coverage of Zelenskyy’s decision to resume the strikes.

The combination of a US president publicly rebuking Kyiv’s energy-strike campaign while simultaneously extending an economic arrangement to Moscow has drawn attention from Ukrainian officials and allied capitals watching for signs of a broader US policy realignment. The diesel deal has not been independently detailed beyond Al Jazeera’s reporting, and the White House has not issued a public readout of its terms.

Zelenskyy’s warning on refugees

The diplomatic friction comes as Zelenskyy has warned that as many as 20 million Ukrainians could flee to Europe if Russia ultimately wins the war, according to POLITICO.eu. That figure, if realized, would represent a humanitarian shift of a scale not yet seen in the war and underscores why Kyiv is pressing to hold territory in Donetsk even as US diplomatic signals grow more ambiguous.

Russia has separately pushed for a “non-negotiable” security zone along the Ukraine border as part of any settlement framework, a demand detailed in our coverage of Putin’s border security-zone position. That demand, combined with the diesel arrangement reported by Al Jazeera, suggests Moscow is pursuing both territorial and economic leverage simultaneously while battlefield lines in Donetsk continue to shift.

What to watch

Operation Vivaldi’s near-term trajectory will depend on whether Ukraine can sustain the pace of its Donetsk advance without a clear signal of continued US military and economic support. Markets and allied governments are likely to watch for any formal confirmation of the diesel deal’s terms, as well as for Trump’s next public comments on both the refinery strikes and the broader shape of US policy toward Moscow. Neither the White House nor the Kremlin has issued an official statement responding directly to the Al Jazeera report as of publication.