Washington just cleared Russian diesel. Ukraine’s third president says that funds war.

Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine’s third president, condemned the United States’ decision to waive sanctions on Russian diesel until April 2027. He invoked the Budapest Memorandum and Pearl Harbor in his response. The Budapest Memorandum was a 1994 agreement in which Ukraine gave up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons in exchange for security assurances from the US, UK, and Russia. Pearl Harbor refers to Japan’s surprise attack on the US in 1941, which pulled America into World War II. Yushchenko’s statement came days after Washington announced the sanctions waiver. He warned that the move finances an economy geared toward total war.