Russia/Ukraine (NATO) – “War is a bonanza for the wealthy and powerful, who emerge out of it even more wealthy and powerful.
Sun 4:15 pm +00:00, 4 Oct 2026
Source: https://slavlandchronicles.substack.com/p/the-bridges-in-ukraine-have-finally
The Bridges in Ukraine Have Finally Been Hit, Trump Retaliation for Striking Moscow’s Diesel Refineries
Let’s make some mon-ay!
There are two wars being fought now in and around the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
The “Slavgrinder” in Donbass, which is focused on maximizing the amount of dead Slavs on both sides, and the Energy Wars. I’ve written about this distinction before — the key point to understand is that these are two distinct wars with different aims and different priorities.
The Kremlin’s top priority is to end the Energy Wars, lift the sanctions on their oligarchs and start making more money. And they believe that they can conclude a deal with the White House to accomplish this. That is what all those talks about selling Arctic technology or Sakhalin shares to Trump’s buddies is all about. They’re not talking about ending the trench warfare or urban sieges in Donbass. That hasn’t been seriously on the table for many years now.
The last month saw an interesting sequence of events worth commenting on briefly.
First, the price of diesel soared again.
And, to mitigate some of the fallout from this, Trump asked Zelensky to stop bombing Russia’s refineries. Diesel is sold as a commodity on the world market, and 50-80% of Russia’s refineries being destroyed by German and British and Turkish drones, is making it harder to prevent soaring costs.
Demonstratively, Zelensky ignored Trump’s request and struck a Moscow refinery, only 10km away from the Kremlin with a massive drone wave two+ weeks ago.
Ukraine has fired its largest drone attack on the Moscow region, the mayor has said, hitting the city’s main oil refinery and a residential building.
Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 450 drones heading for the capital had been shot down in what he called “the most massive” attack. The region’s governor said at least two people were killed and 20 injured.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed Kyiv had hit a “key” Russian oil facility and a logistics site in the region with drones and missiles, representing “billions of dollars that sustain the war machine”.
The Americans have been blaming the higher diesel costs on Zelensky for awhile now. Here:
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright blamed Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil refineries for driving domestic diesel prices to record highs, during an interview with CBS News on September 6.
In response to questions about record-high U.S. diesel prices and a potential export ban, Wright said: “The diesel situation has been challenging because Russian refineries have suffered significant damage. Russia used to be a meaningful exporter of diesel. Today, today they don’t export any diesel, and in fact, they’ve become a meaningful importer of gasoline.”
Of course, not a word is said about Israel deliberately targeting Iran’s refineries … and possibly the refineries of the Gulf States as well.
Because of Trump’s frustration with Zelensky, I believe that permission has been given to Putin to put more pressure on Kiev, to get them to stop sabotaging the various business deals and energy shipments that America relies on from its ally Russia, to be able to fight its wars and keep its economies running on the cheap.
This is why, for the first time in this war, Putin has hit the bridges over the Dniepr in Kiev. He didn’t destroy them, and these aren’t the main bridges, the most important ones that need to be taken out which ship NATO weapons and fuel and supplies to the Donbass with impunity. But still, it is a way of issuing a threat:
A Russian strike has hit a second major bridge in Kyiv, Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko has said, as Moscow ramps up attacks on critical infrastructure in Ukraine’s capital.
The attack on Saturday morning injured two people, and damaged the road surface and overhead trolleybus wires on the Pivnichnyi (Northern) Bridge, Klitschko said, causing traffic jams.
It comes after the Pivdennyi (Southern) Bridge was hit multiple times by Russian drones this week, with Klitschko warning that “the enemy is tearing Kyiv apart”.
Russia said its drones had hit the two bridges used to transfer Ukrainian troops and military cargo. Moscow again urged foreign citizens, including diplomats, to leave Kyiv.
The two Kyiv bridges across the Dnipro River link the western and eastern parts of the capital and had not been hit before Thursday.
The Russian strikes have severed road, rail and trolleybus links across the wide river. The ongoing drone threat means restrictions on other routes, bringing traffic jams to the city’s roads for a second day – though Friday’s gridlock has not been repeated to the same level.
Many of the city’s residents – which number about three million – rely on the metro to travel across the city every day. The fear is this new Russian tactic will result in sustained attacks which could effectively cut the city in two.
The NYT reports that there’s an oil deal between Kushner and the Kremlin that is in its final stages. Here:
The Trump administration’s talks with Russia about ending the war in Ukraine have expanded to include a multibillion-dollar oil deal that would benefit Middle Eastern business executives with ties to the two main U.S. negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.
The deal, which is contingent on approval from the U.S. government and the Kremlin, is for a sprawling set of oil fields, refineries and gas stations around the world owned by Lukoil, one of Russia’s biggest energy companies.
The leading group seeking the deal includes an American investor, Todd Boehly, who has donated $2 million to President Trump’s political causes; two Middle Eastern groups that have done business with Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff’s family; and an arm of the U.S. government itself.
The monthslong negotiations, which were described by eight people familiar with them, shed new light on Mr. Trump’s latest approach to settling a four-year war that has killed hundreds of thousands. The people spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.
There is no indication that Mr. Kushner or Mr. Witkoff themselves stand to profit. But the pending deal represents a striking intermingling of personal business ties with geopolitics, even for an administration that has regularly dismissed concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia brought up the deal when he met with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner at the Kremlin on Sept. 5, according to three people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Putin proposed it get done as a way of showing Russians that they can do business with the United States, according to one of the people.
The sanctions on Russian oil companies were cloaked in moralitarian language but were designed to pressure the sale and transfer of these assets to Western owners.
The Trump administration imposed sanctions on Lukoil a year ago, describing the move as new pressure on Mr. Putin to “stop the killing.” It also created a lucrative opportunity: Lukoil was forced to sell off its sprawling portfolio of international holdings.
Investors around the world scrambled to bid on the assets, but the U.S. government held veto power because it controlled how to enforce its sanctions. Because of Russia’s autocratic system, Mr. Putin was seen as the final decision maker in Moscow .
The bidding frenzy accelerated last November, when the Treasury Department rejected an initial offer by Gunvor, a Swiss-based energy trading company with past ties to Russia, which had moved to buy Lukoil’s foreign assets. The Treasury Department said in a statement that “as long as Putin continues the senseless killings, the Kremlin’s puppet, Gunvor, will never get a license to operation and profit.”
Carlyle secured a “nonexclusive” agreement in January with Lukoil to sell its international assets. It was up to the Treasury Department to then sign off on the deal. As months passed with no final deal, other bidders intensified their efforts to step in.
It seems that this strategy succeeded and Putin has stepped in to side against Lukoil and the other targeted assets, to pressure them to sell to the Americans in exchange for some political favors, we can assume.
And that explains why Zelensky refuses to de-escalate.
He wishes to spike and sabotage this deal. And to do that, he must keep ignoring Trump’s demands.
In a recent phone call, Donald Trump urged Volodymyr Zelensky to stop Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries. Whether a request or a demand, this appears, certainly at first glance, fundamentally different from the Biden administration’s policy of restricting the use of US long-range missiles to hit targets inside Russia.
The US president has justified his position primarily on economic grounds. He argues that the regular attacks on Russian refining capacity were contributing to disruptions in diesel supplies and rising fuel prices. The International Energy Agency has estimated that Ukraine hit one Russian oil refinery every three daysover the first eight months of 2026.
(…)
Zelensky reportedly rejected Trump’s request, telling the Wall Street Journal’s editor-in-chief, Emma Tucker, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting on September 23, that “our lives are more important than the price of energy.”
Even if the deal goes through eventually, by the beginning of 2027, presumably, it won’t end the “Slavgrinder” though.
But analysts are still confused, willfully or not, about what all these talks and strikes are all really about.
This is just business by other means.
The Trumps and the Bidens and the Clintons and the Putins and the Assads and the Zelenskys and the Ayatollahs are just mafia clans. They are criminal syndicates with hunting/predation grounds that they feel they are entitled to. What we are seeing is a battle between criminal syndicates for looting rights. All of it was started by the Zelensky clan’s encroachment on the Medvedchuk syndicate’s properties some 5 years ago almost now. The Trump-Kushner clan are moving in on the easy pickings in Russia now. The Putin syndicate’s hope is that they can bribe this mafia into going easy on them.
But the Trump mafia can’t even control Zelensky, apparently.
So what is the point of Putin making all these deals and claims in the media that peace can be achieved by cutting a deal with the Trump administration? The end result will be that Trump and Putin will declare peace and the bombs will continue falling, with the media studiously ignoring it on orders from above.
There is no end in sight for the actual war.
But we will see a Putin-led attempt to try and pressure Zelensky into no longer bombing the assets that Moscow is preparing to sell off to Trump and his cabal.
All the while, living costs for ordinary people everywhere who rely on global commodities will worsen. But constricted supply and consistent demand means huge profits for the oligarchs whose assets have NOT been bombed yet. Moscow’s favored oligarchs were raking in tens of billions in profits from this SMO because of all the destruction that had been wrought on Russia from these strikes.
Constricting the supply artificially is an age-old oligarch tactic to make obscene amounts of money quickly.
And, all economic activity is “Zero-Sum”, which is to say that one man’s gain is another man’s loss. This is hotly contested by Jewish economist theorists, who trick people into conflating free trade with the concept I am describing here. In our situation, the massive gains in profit are created from the creation of an artificial monopoly situation. When Kiev strikes these refineries, the cost is carried by the Russian citizens who are now reduced to operating in a de facto monopolist’s market.
One oligarch pays Zelensky the proper bribe and his assets are spared.
His competition? Wiped out.
Now he can jack up the price 2-3-4-6 million times over.
Zelensky can say that he’s struck a blow against Fascism, the Liberals can feel like they’re saving Democracy Values, and the oligarchs can rake in their profits. With those profits, they can now buy out even more assets on the cheap, because the war and the economic instability has made business for less connected competitors impossible.
War is a bonanza for the wealthy and powerful, who emerge out of it even more wealthy and powerful.
So, why would they even end the war? There is no appetite for ending it in the East or the West. What they want is to refine it somewhat, to make it more profitable and to muscle out competitors that they don’t like.
Because Trump and Putin are Christian Moral Values?
Don’t make me laugh.
