Over the weekend, Donald Trump declared an “energy ceasefire” in the Russia-Ukraine war. The moratorium on reciprocal attacks against oil and gas infrastructure was “effective immediately,” he claimed.

I didn’t cover it because — spoiler alert — I knew it wasn’t real. Or not real outside of a Trumpian context. Virtually none of Trump’s “deals” meet a common sense definition of the term, and as we’ve seen repeatedly, the ceasefires he brokers tend to be followed by a lot of shooting.

In the same social media message, Trump beseeched Kyiv and Moscow to respect his imaginary ceasefire: “Do not break it!” (“Respect my authoritah!”)

Just hours later, a Shahed drone hit a Naftogaz facility in Kharkiv. In a separate overnight attack, railway infrastructure and a power substation were reportedly damaged in Zhytomyr.

“All morning today, more and more Russian jet-powered shaheds continued to enter our skies over Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities,” Volodymyr Zelensky said, in his daily, live-streamed address. “This is Putin’s answer to Trump.”

Although Trump indicated that both Ukraine and Russia had already signed off on the agreement, Zelensky said Kyiv found about it just like everybody else. “We did not know about [it],” he told a security conference in Warsaw. “We learned [about the deal] from the media as well.”

As Ukrainian cities burned another night, Zelensky said Kyiv was still waiting to see the details of Trump’s ceasefire. The Kremlin was mostly mum on the alleged truce, which Trump announced after suggesting, for the umpteenth time, that Ukraine “get a new president.”

Keen to divert attention from the Iran war, Trump’s taken to scapegoating Zelensky for soaring diesel costs. “He wants to make problems for our farmers,” Trump said, of the man he once tried to ply with anti-tank missiles in exchange for dirt on the Biden family. “Russia supplies a large portion of the diesel fuel throughout the world.”

Trump’s make-believe energy truce and renewed calls for Zelensky’s ouster came on the heels of a new Faustian bargain with Putin, who’ll supposedly supply diesel to the US and global markets to help blunt price increases. Scott Bessent quickly issued an ad hoc OFAC waiver.

That’s what it’s come to: Lifting sanctions on Russian energy exports so the Pentagon can sustain a blockade of Iranian energy exports, all while Russia allegedly provides the IRGC with targeting assistance for pot shots at US Navy vessels and Iran supplies drone technology to Russia for attacks on Ukraine.

Experts roundly downplayed Trump’s diesel deal with Putin, which I didn’t cover for the same reason I didn’t cover the energy ceasefire: It’s meaningless. Despite the large-sounding numbers, the volumes are trivial. Naturally, Moscow will plow whatever hard-currency receipts it collects from Trump right back into the Russian war effort.

None of that’s lost on Brussels, of course. Kaja Kallas, the EU’s de facto foreign minister, warned against cutting backdoor deals with Putin. “Suspending sanctions on Russian diesel provides Moscow with more revenues to wage war,” she said over the weekend, stating the obvious.

On Monday, Zelensky posed a question. Why, he wondered, doesn’t Trump “conclude a diesel deal with Ukraine?” Trump’s arrangement with Putin won’t “have a tangible impact” on global supply and besides, “everybody in the world” knows the war in the Mideast is the more important swing factor for energy prices, he went on.

Speaking to the press early this week, Kallas said the EU would welcome an energy ceasefire — if only one existed. And assuming it held. “Personally, I would also welcome a ceasefire that includes people not being killed,” she added, dryly.