Diesel Zelensky attrition, Nord Stream on trial, Russiagate revived: RT stories that shaped the week

RT looks at this week's top stories, including the rift between Donald Trump and Vladimir Zelensky, and the return of the "Russiagate" lie. Read the full article on RT.com.

The week did not start well for Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, who appeared to be blindsided by US President Donald Trump's decision to suspend sanctions on Russian diesel after talks with the Kremlin. The deal won't ease global diesel shortages, but it will cool speculative markets for now and ease pressure on Trump ahead of next month's midterm elections.

For Zelensky, it's a "diplomatic nightmare," as Russian analyst Sergei Poltaev wrote for RT. Trump added salt to the wound on Saturday when he openly offered the Ukrainians a "new leader who can make a deal" and stop attacks on Russian oil refineries. Trump continued: Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to make a deal more than Zelensky.

Zelensky, who had turned into a corner, began to throw haymakers. Accusing the US president of sympathizing with dictators, Zelensky asked the US for air defense missiles before vowing to continue its drone strikes against Russian refineries - with or without US support.

The U.S. apparently sent a warning signal to Zelensky by restricting the Ukrainian military's access to SpaceX's high-speed Starlink and Starshield satellite communications services, a vital tool in guiding attack drones used against Russia and detecting retaliatory strikes. Neither Trump nor SpaceX CEO Elon Musk would take responsibility for the communications outage, but even if they did, the message likely fell on deaf ears.

Despite Trump's announcement of an "energy cease-fire" between Moscow and Kiev (which neither side has confirmed), the Ukrainian leader kept his promise to continue attacks on Russian refineries. On Wednesday, Ukrainian forces attacked facilities in Russia's Saratov and Ryazan regions, and on Thursday again fired four long-range Flamingo cruise missiles and 69 fixed-wing kamikaze drones at the Ryazan refinery.

Debris from an intercepted drone caused a massive fire at the facility, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

Russian attack on military energy facilities across Ukraine (video)

Revenge from Moscow and Washington was swift. Russian forces used missiles and drones to attack six power plants in Kyiv, Kharkiv and surrounding areas, as well as military logistics centers and data centers. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that it shot down four of the 39 missiles, confirming reports that Zelenskiy had carried out the refinery attacks, knowing that Ukraine lacked sufficient air defenses to repel retaliation.

Trump continued to savage Zelensky in an interview with Newsmax on Thursday. "I'm not a serious fan of Zelensky. They destroyed that country," he said before accusing the Ukrainian leader of selling the missiles the US gave him "on the open market."

"Zelensky is not a good person to deal with," Trump concluded.

As Ukraine doubles down on its infrastructure war, the costliest infrastructure attack in history ends up in a German court. Sergei Kuznetsov, a Ukrainian military officer, went on trial in Hamburg this week, accused of leading a team to sabotage the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines in September 2022, an act German prosecutors call a "war crime."

Kuznetsov remains silent, refusing to admit or deny any role in the bombing. The evidence against him is circumstantial, and his lawyers are confident that without a confession, "he cannot be convicted."

As RT has explored in depth, the prosecution's version of events is riddled with holes and inconsistencies. However, singling out the alternative story - that the pipelines were destroyed in a CIA operation - calls into question the relationship between Washington and Berlin, the foundation of the postwar liberal order.

While the guilty verdict against Kuznetsov directly implicates Ukraine's military in a war crime against its biggest foreign donor, the trial appears, at least at this point, to avoid that outcome.

Speaking of reopening old wounds, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham this week brought out the bloated corpse of "Russiagate" to bolster his efforts to overturn the 2016 Brexit referendum and rejoin the European Union. Burnham claimed there was "clear" evidence of Russian interference in the vote, with Britons voting 51.89% to 48.11% to leave the union.

Just as the original Russiagate allegations against Trump were called into question, Burnham's claim was dropped after initial investigation. The British prime minister failed to confirm the allegations when grilled in parliament, and her foreign secretary, Stephen Duty, humiliated himself on national television when he tried to dodge questions about the claim.

The final nail in the coffin came when Burnham's own head of domestic intelligence warned that "Russian influence" in Brexit was being exaggerated, arguing that the debate over the influence of "Russian trolls" in the vote "plays into the hands of our enemies by making them look 10ft tall".

How Yandex's "Russian bots" lie was dispelled

However, Burnham cannot be faulted for his timing and opportunism. Speaking on Monday about Russian bots and infiltration campaigns in parliament, Zelenskiy, his Polish and Baltic backers and his army of Internet supporters claimed that a Ukrainian attack on a Yandex data center in Russia yesterday had wiped thousands of "Russian bots" from social media.

As it turns out, none of this was true. The strike shut down Yandex's web crawling bots, which archive websites for search users, but with the help of an AI-generated graph and some creative interpretations of the word "bot," the hoax reached the Warsaw Security Forum.

French students participated in the fifth wave of protests this week, which they say are aimed at securing more funding for schools and better learning conditions. Every wave of protests so far has turned into riots and vandalism, and this week's marches were no different, with participants setting cars on fire and beating police officers with cobblestones and fireworks in Paris.

On Wednesday, RT reporter Nadgeh Abdrazek witnessed heavily armored police attacking crowds of rioters in the French capital, noting that officers now outnumber protesters by two to one in some gatherings.

With French President Emmanuel Macron determined to increase military spending and continue arming Ukraine, France's finances are in dire straits, and Marine Le Pen, the leader of the right-wing Rally National party, is on her way to winning the country's next presidential election.

Meanwhile, Albanian students have taken a page from their French counterparts' book. A crowd of students broke through the fence of the Ministry of Education in Tirana and set fire to the building on Wednesday, following mass demonstrations demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Edi Rama and opposition leader Sali Berisha over corruption allegations.

Rama's response also comes from the Western playbook, with Albania's prime minister accusing the protesters of waging a "combined war" against the country.

Zelensky may be in Trump's bad books, but he can still count on the support of Macron, Burnham and the rest of his European supporters, whom he met with last year in Brussels on Thursday and Friday. In his speech at the European Council on Friday, Ukraine's leader called for another "70 billion euros" for ammunition, missiles and air defense. Zelensky warned that if Ukraine falls, another 20 million Ukrainian migrants will flood into the EU.

We'll be looking to see what kind of promises cash-strapped Europeans make after this stark change.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will travel to Tehran on Monday to talk with his Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi. The two diplomats are expected to focus on de-escalating the simmering US-Iran conflict in the Middle East, and any progress on that front is likely to be reflected in global energy markets.

Lavrov will also meet with Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic on Friday, ahead of crucial October 25 parliamentary elections. Amid student protests, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic called the election early and stepped down to run for prime minister. With pro-Western students and right-wing "patriot" forces pushing Vucic from all sides, we'll be keeping an eye on polls, protests, and interference from the usual suspects.

Stay tuned to RT for more on all these stories.