From Anchorage to Geneva: How Trump’s Energy Leverage Is Steering Ukraine Peace Talks

Of course, there are other drivers behind the US’ renewed push for the quick resolution of the Ukraine war, such as the upcoming midterm elections in the United States. President Trump has staked his reputation as a ‘deal maker’ on the successful resolution of this conflict, and he needs this win to sell to his voter base in the US ahead of midterm elections.

President Zelensky did say, earlier this month, that the US wants Russia and Ukraine to resolve their differences and sign a peace deal by the month of June this year, before President Trump shifts his focus on the midterm elections.

“The elections are, for them (the US), definitely more important. Let’s not be naïve,” Zelensky told reporters. “They (the US) say they want to achieve everything by June, and they will do everything possible to ensure the war ends that way.”

On February 16^th, that is one day before the latest round of trilateral talks between the US, Russia, and Ukraine occurred, President Trump while talking to reporters urged Ukraine to ensure that a deal is agreed quickly.

“Ukraine better come to the table fast. That’s all I’m telling you,” Trump told reporters.

However, the Author must admit here that he had not factored in the midterm elections while making his projections in the previous articles that are being cited right now, which is a grave oversight on his part. One that he shall do well to learn from and improve his work accordingly.

So, overall, things as they appear right now, the Trump administration is trying to move fast on its objectives of resolving the conflict in Ukraine and normalising relations with Russia. The recent news about the potential natural gas development project in Alaska involving a Russian company, lends credence to this.

That said, it is also important to note here that Ukraine is not the only one being pressured even if that is the impression one would easily get by President Trump’s rhetoric in the public which is mostly directed against Ukraine and its President Zelensky.

How Is the Trump Administration Pressuring Russia?

Geo-strategically, it makes sense for the Trump administration to pursue normalisation with Russia, because the latter has been deepening its relations with China, thereby creating avenues for itself to create problems for the US in the Indo-Pacific.

Also, considering Russia’s failure to takeover Ukraine completely and its enormous losses throughout its ongoing war with the latter, it is obvious that it cannot be realistically expected to be able to impose hegemony on Europe, meaning Europe cannot be a first order priority for the US from security perspective.

However, the Indo-Pacific region is a first order priority for the US, considering China’s rise in this region and its intention to surpass the US as a pre-eminent power, and therefore, a potential Sino-Russian alliance is as much a danger to its pre-eminence in the world as is the prospect of Russian hegemony over Europe, which as stated earlier is highly unlikely to happen.

Nevertheless, for normalisation with Russia to actually yield dividends for the US in the long-term, it must be realized from the position of strength. Washington cannot come across as more eager to normalize, otherwise it will risk itself being taken for a ride by Moscow. That is how statecraft works.

So, as discussed earlier, the deepening of Russia’s relations with China after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and ensuing Western sanctions against it, has basically increased the Russian economy’s dependence on trade with China to remain afloat.

And, this increasing dependence on trade with China has put Beijing in the position to dictate the terms of the overall bilateral economic relations between the two countries, which is causing growing frustration within the Russian business class over the difficulties of doing business with China.

Besides, even Russia does not have unlimited manpower and equipment to indefinitely fight the war in Ukraine, which means that longer this conflict stretches, the more dire Russia’s strategic situation will become, as it gets trapped between a more unified Europe and increasingly powerful China.

However, in recent years, the battlefield calculus has been increasingly weighing against the Ukrainian side. Also, compared to Ukraine, Russia definitely has more manpower as well as significant weapons production capability.

For instance, per a report by the BBC’s Russian service in late June, citing an anonymous senior NATO official, the US-led alliance had assessed that Russia has enough resources to finance its war in Ukraine through at least 2027.

So, while Russia has incentives to resolve the war in Ukraine in return for normalisation of relations with the West, and the US in particular, it can afford to persist in the conflict much longer than Ukraine can, and this is the reality that the Trump administration needed to change, if it had to force the resolution of Ukraine war as a pre-requisite for normalisation of US-Russia relations.

In his article published on June 1^st 2025, the Author had also discussed some instances of President Trump having made critical remarks about Russia and its President Putin, particularly highlighting the one in which he used the phrase: “the downfall of Russia”.

Thereafter, in October 2025, the Author published another article wherein he discussed certain measures taken by the Trump administration since July 2025, which he interpreted as Trump’s way of conveying to Putin how he could bring about “the downfall of Russia” as he had threatened on May 25^th 2025, if Russia continues to stall the peace negotiations.

In particular, the Author drew attention to the 50% tariffs that the Trump administration imposed on India’s exports to the United States in the month of July and August 2025, while citing India’s continued purchase of Russian oil as one of the reasons behind these tariffs.

These tariffs compelled India to reduce its purchase of Russian oil, which it did slowly and quietly, starting from July 2025. By January 2026, Russian crude imports to India fell to around 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd), down sharply from the peak flows of around 2.0 million bpd in mid-2025, representing an approximate 40% reduction in volume from that peak.

Moreover, a Reuters report published on January 31^st, cited unnamed Indian government officials as saying that India is slated to cut its Russian oil imports to below 1 million barrels per day soon, eventually bringing them down to around 500,000-600,000 bpd after March.

And, while China’s imports of Russian oil have remained resilient, there had emerged a trend around September 2025 wherein Russia’s Urals crude had begun to lose its demand among China’s refiners, due to lengthy shipping distances for Far East Asian end-users, several sanctions-related complications, and lower quality of Urals compared to seaborne imports of Russia’s Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean (ESPO) grade crude oil.

As a result, Chinese refiners wanted a steep discount to continue their purchase of Urals crude, which would have essentially meant less value for Russia despite the continued increase of its physical export volumes of Urals crude to China. 

However, after India began slashing its imports of Urals crude, Russia began diverting those volumes to China by offering steep discounts, and the independent Chinese refiners absorbed these steeply discounted cargoes.

So, in 2024 and the first half of 2025, India was the largest importer of Russian crude but since November 2025, China has surpassed India as the top buyer of Russia’s seaborne oil shipments, and now experts in Russia are worried that the country’s oil exports could soon become dependent on only one buyer – China.

Per the data put out by the Institute for Energy and Finance (IEF) in Russia – which claims to actively participate in Russia’s foreign energy policy and energy diplomacy, and in the development of state and corporate strategic planning documents – China accounted for 43% of total Russian oil exports in 2025, and its share could reach up to 50% by 2026.

The IEF further pointed out in a post on Telegram on February 13^th, that given the observed decline in seaborne Russian oil shipments to Turkey, as well as the complete cessation of oils supplies from Russia to the European Union by the end of 2027, China’s dominance as the main buyer of Russian oil will only increase.

“Russia risks repeating the fate of Iran, whose oil exports are currently entirely dependent on a single buyer – China,” concluded the IEF in its post.

Now, to understand the IEF’s worries, one must look at recent tensions between Iran and the US and the uncertainty since the beginning of 2026 over whether the US would attack Iran if negotiations for a nuclear deal failed, which has caused the purchases of Iranian crude by Chinese independent refiners and traders to decline. 

Per the estimates from Vortexa – a provider of real-time data and advanced analytics for energy and freight markets –, as cited in the Reuters report on February 16^th, Iranian oil deliveries into China declined to 1.03 million bpd in February, down from January’s 1.25 million bpd.

So, similar fate awaits Russia, which is already suffering the consequences of being overly reliant on trade with China, and it is the Trump administration that has orchestrated this by taking out India’s share of Russian oil exports.

In addition to tariffs, the Trump administration reportedly initiated another line of effort since July 2025 to curb Russia’s revenues from energy exports, as part of which, it started sharing intelligence with Ukraine to enable long-range strikes on energy facilities deep inside Russia.

In early October of 2025, reports had emerged that the Trump administration had agreed to provide assistance to Kyiv for strikes on Russian energy infrastructure, however, according to a report by the Financial Times (FT) on October 12^th 2025, the US had already been assisting Ukraine in its strikes against Russian energy assets for months.

The Trump administration intensified intelligence sharing with Ukraine since midsummer, the FT report said, allowing Ukraine to strike “important Russian energy assets including oil refineries far beyond the frontline”.

Russia’s Transneft cut crude intake by about 250,000 barrels per day after a Ukrainian drone strike hit the Kaleikino pumping station in Tatarstan, Reuters reported. The cuts mainly affect Tatneft and could worsen Russia’s oil export problems, sources said. #Transneft pic.twitter.com/R2ZHhcFQGF

— NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 (@NOELreports) February 24, 2026

So, on one hand, President Trump is holding carrots in front of Russia in the form of the promise of restoration of business relations with the United States, as is evident from the recent news about the planned gas development project in Alaska between a close Trump family associate and Russia’s Novatek.

On the other hand, Trump is holding a stick which basically entails his administration’s several measures to reduce Russia’s oil exports that has forced the Russian oil companies to partially suspend their oil drilling due to declining revenues, thereby also creating a prospect of potential loss in global market share if oil production in the country continues to decrease.

So, these substantive discussions that reportedly have taken place between Russia and Ukraine in January and February of 2026 to bring about a negotiated end to their war since 2022, appear to be a consequence of the Trump administration’s concerted efforts at tightening the screws around both the countries.

Tanmay Kadam is a geopolitical observer based in India. He has experience working as a Defense and International Affairs journalist for EurAsian Times. He can be contacted at tanmaykadam700@gmail.com.