A Malta-flagged tanker carrying Russian diesel is heading for New York after the fuel deal between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Reuters reported in an exclusive on 23 October, citing LSEG shipping data. Two weeks earlier, the US Treasury temporarily waived sanctions on Russian diesel.

The tanker is due in the US on 7 November, four days after Americans vote in the midterms. So the first US-bound cargo cannot reach American pumps before the election. Energy analysts also doubt the deal will lower diesel prices meaningfully. US fuel prices rose mainly because the war with Iran disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Trump, however, has blamed Ukraine’s strikes on Russian refineries.

Loaded on the day Moscow promised

The medium-sized tanker Agioi Fanendes took on 40,000 metric tons of ultra-low sulfur diesel at the Baltic port of Primorsk on 22 October, shipping data showed. In March, Ukraine’s General Staff said its drones hit the Transneft oil terminal at that same port.

A day before the loading, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak announced that the first tanker would sail for the US on 22 October. He pledged more shipments and said Russia would meet US needs within its capabilities.

From a pledge to a partial lift

On 9 October, Trump wrote that Russia would immediately supply over 300,000 tons of diesel “to the American and Global Marketplace.” Another 500,000 tons would follow in November, then 1 million tons “immediately thereafter.”

Moscow had banned diesel exports on 8 July, after Ukrainian drone strikes shut down refineries and caused fuel shortages inside Russia. The Russian government stated on 10 October that it had partially lifted the ban, clearing 500,000 tons for the world market at this stage. Russian diesel shipments to Türkiye and Brazil have since resumed, boosting Moscow’s war revenue.

Trump has made other moves to cut diesel prices before the vote, Reuters reported. He waived parts of a new sanctions law against Russia. He also threatened Europe with a US diesel export ban unless countries released more fuel from their emergency reserves.

The Cradle | October 23, 2026

Cyprus hosted the leadership of the pro-Israel US lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), in Nicosia on 21 October, pledging to deepen the island’s ties with Israel and the US.

Outgoing AIPAC president Bernard Kaminetsky and his successor, Yehuda Neuberger, led the delegation to the presidential palace for talks with Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides.

The talks focused on accelerating the 3+1 Mechanism, a partnership binding Cyprus, Greece, Israel, and the US to coordinate on energy, security, and infrastructure.

AIPAC, in return, pledged to keep championing Cypriot interests in Washington.

Meanwhile, pro-Israel lobbies have been embedding themselves inside the Cypriot and Greek parliaments, with Israel Allies Foundation (IAF) launching caucuses in both legislatures to bring lawmakers into line with Israel’s regional agenda.

IAF president Josh Reinstein unveiled the Cypriot caucus on 14 October after meeting Christodoulides, explicitly pitting the initiative against Ankara by branding Turkiye a “common enemy” of Israel and Cyprus.

Cyprus’s main left-wing opposition party condemned the MPs for turning parliament into a lobby for Israel amid its ongoing genocide in Gaza, while in Greece, one left-wing party warned that it would turn parliament into a tool for whitewashing war crimes.

Israel’s deepening ties with Greece and Cyprus have developed over the past decade into a strategic alignment that combines energy cooperation, military coordination, and shared opposition to Turkish maritime claims in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The US has encouraged the relationship through the 3+1 format, which brings Washington into the Israel–Greece–Cyprus trilateral partnership and frames it as a vehicle for regional stability, energy security, and cooperation among “like-minded” partners.

Through the arrangement, Israel gains a gateway to European markets through Greece and Cyprus, along with diplomatic backing in disputes over offshore gas fields.

Athens and Nicosia, in turn, receive Israeli military technology and a partner against Turkiye’s assertive stance on maritime zones, airspace, and the divided island of Cyprus.

Washington, meanwhile, sees the axis as part of a broader effort to anchor energy routes and security cooperation in the Eastern Mediterranean while reducing reliance on rival powers, even as the US courts Ankara with offers of F-35 sales and sanctions relief.

Israeli hostility toward Ankara, and its efforts to curb Turkish power, stem from fear that Washington’s growing dependence on Turkiye will erode Israel’s regional dominance.

Despite the friction, Turkiye continued to serve as a conduit for Azerbaijani crude to Israel through the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan Pipeline (BTC) and Ceyhan Port, even after cutting direct trade in May 2024 and throughout Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza.

In 160 years of digging at Troy, nobody had found anything you could play. Archaeologists have pulled walls, gates, jewelry, weapons and tableware out of the ground in huge quantities, but never an instrument. This season that changed. The team led by Rüstem Aslan of Onsekiz Mart University in Çanakkale, in northwestern Turkey, recovered a […]