Cheaper Diesel Is Not Worth Letting Russia Off the Hook

A month ago, the president signed a law that Congress had passed to do something sanctions alone have not managed: make it costly to keep buying the Russian oil and gas that pay for the war in Ukraine. On Friday, two days before its heaviest penalties were to begin, he waived most of it. The White House certified that suspending the law served the national interests of the United States, and a spokesperson, Taylor Rogers, said enforcing the sanctions now would impede ongoing American efforts to negotiate a durable and comprehensive peace between Russia and Ukraine.

That is not good enough. The law, named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham, gave the president the power to waive its penalties, and he used a power Congress granted him. But a waiver clause is meant for emergencies and for diplomacy that is working, not for setting aside a freshly enacted policy before it has been tried. The administration’s stated reason deserves a fair hearing: if a lasting peace were within reach, protecting the talks would be a serious argument. But the penalties were built as leverage to bring Moscow to terms, and giving them up before any agreement is signed trades that leverage for a promise. When a statute passes with broad support and is shelved within weeks, the public is entitled to ask what changed and who benefits.

The likely answer is fuel prices. Diesel, which moves nearly everything Americans buy, has run around $6 a gallon this fall, and oil has stayed high since the war with Iran began in February. Bloomberg reported that the new tariffs complicated the administration’s effort to bring diesel prices down before the midterms. The waiver followed a deal with Vladimir Putin under which Moscow agreed to put more diesel on the world market in return for sanctions relief.

We take that concern seriously. High fuel costs are a real burden on truckers, farmers and families, and prices at the pump and the grocery store deserve more attention from Washington, not less. The strongest case for the waiver is precisely this: tariffs of up to 100 percent on goods from the biggest buyers of Russian energy, which the law firm King & Spalding, citing historic trade data, says would likely include China, India and Turkey, would ripple into American prices at a bad moment, and more fuel on the market should help. A president who chooses lower costs for households over an untested sanctions regime is making a defensible trade-off on its face.

But look at what is being traded. Russia’s response tells the story: Kirill Dmitriev, an envoy to Putin, called the suspension a truly historic moment. Ukraine’s president called it unfortunate and warned that relief only encourages Moscow to keep attacking. A bipartisan group of senators had already called the earlier diesel arrangement a betrayal of Ukraine. When a policy delights the Kremlin and alarms both parties in Congress, it is worth asking whether American households are really the main beneficiaries.

There are better ways to ease fuel costs than handing Moscow a reprieve: coordinated releases with allies, help for the families and small businesses hit hardest, and steady diplomacy to reopen shipping lanes disrupted by the Iran war. None of those requires dismantling a law the president himself signed.

Congress should insist on a full explanation of the certification, hold hearings on what the diesel deal actually delivers, and consider narrowing the waiver authority so that it cannot be used to nullify a statute in the weeks before an election. Sanctions only work if the people being sanctioned believe they will last. Friday’s order taught Moscow the opposite lesson.