On 6 May 2022, I began using the term tsunami of ripple effects to describe the cost of not intervening in a war that threatens the security of the Alliance. That was NATO's own strategic ambition—right up until the Madrid Summit in June 2022, where it found its political will and military capabilities wanting, deterred by Russia.

The latest wave of that tsunami reached American voters this month, in the price of diesel—and the US President's response shows exactly how the refusal to end the war keeps compounding its costs.

Diesel, and the president who blamed the victim

President Trump has urged President Zelenskyy to stop targeting Russian oil refineries, saying the attacks are "hurting the world" as fuel-supply disruptions from the Ukraine and Iran wars propel US diesel prices to a record high, according to CNBC.

"Mr. Zelenskyy has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia," Trump said during an official visit to Ireland. "Let him go after targets but not diesel fuel because he's causing a shortage of diesel. This isn't done by the Middle East; this is done by what's happening with Russia and Ukraine."

The claim inverts the evidence. The latest IEA assessment is unusually clear: the US-Iran war and the disruption of Middle Eastern flows are the dominant shock, with Gulf refined-product exports down almost 60% since February.

Disruptions to Russia's refining system and the near-halt in Russian product exports following intensified Ukrainian attacks, the IEA says, "have compounded these losses." The aggressor is responsible for the dominant shock; the war Trump himself helped start accounts for most of the rest; and the victim's attempt to force Russia toward peace has only reinforced the consequences of that aggression.

Yet Trump singled out Zelenskyy—not Putin for starting the war, not himself and Prime Minister Netanyahu for the war against Iran.

Ukraine has intensified the tempo of its refinery-strike campaign and improved its targeting to cause maximum pain to the Russian oil industry, striking at least 26 different Russian oil refineries since the beginning of 2026, according to ISW. The strikes have put roughly half of Russia's refining capacity offline and prompted widespread fuel shortages, with Moscow recently extending a ban on diesel exports through the end of September to stabilize domestic supplies.

The lie, the contradiction, and the lack of credibility

Trump's statement is an outright lie—the link to the US/Israel war on Iran is clear for anyone to see—and it is in direct contradiction with US and European policy.

As late as early July, Trump noted that Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries were an escalation capable of bringing the war to an end. The reversal appears driven primarily by the fuel-price shock and its political consequences—not by any change in his assessment of the strikes' military value. US consumers have seen a roughly 20% increase in diesel prices in a matter of weeks, midterms are seven weeks away, and the Republican Party is struggling in the polls.

And Ukraine's strikes aim at the exact effect Western sanctions were designed to achieve: ensuring Russia cannot afford to continue the war by undermining its economy. Neither the US nor Europe is supposed to import Russian crude or refined products—the EU banned them, cutting Russia's share of EU oil imports from 25.8% in 2021 to 2.2% in 2025, and the US prohibited them in March 2022.

"The United States is taking sweeping action against Russia's key source of revenue for funding its brutal and illegal war against Ukraine," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in January 2025. That is exactly what Ukraine is doing—with the difference that when Ukraine does it, Trump calls it "hurting the world."

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The tsunami of ripple effects

Diesel is only the latest wave. During the year after Madrid, I watched the West take the role of bystander to a war that is all about us—a Russian ever-escalating hybrid war against European NATO members—seemingly accepting the global consequences.

I say seemingly because it makes no sense to sit idle while the tsunami grows to the point where it causes political, economic, and geopolitical chain reactions impossible to predict and difficult to control.

Inaction is not neutral. It is also a choice, and it carries the consequences of engagement with one crucial difference: inaction makes us react to the strategic environment, whereas action lets us shape it.

Aid without an endpoint is not a policy for ending the war; it is a policy for enduring it.

Enduring it is what produced the tsunami: the reverberations that raise the cost of living, undermine food and energy security, and spread famine, recession, inflation, and rising interest rates—increasing the risk of social unrest, extremism, and, ultimately, the fall of governments. Europe is living through the biggest refugee crisis since the Second World War.

he international security architecture is being dismantled, the institutions meant to unite us are discredited, and NATO no longer deters Russia—raising the risk of direct conflict between Russia and Europe.

In June 2023, I argued this would likely change the political landscape in the US and Europe—as in the 1930s—as political forces sought to exploit voters' frustration over the war's global effects. It produced President Trump and a rising tide of right-wing forces across Europe—the leading edge of what Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney called, at Davos, a rupture the world hasn't yet reckoned with: "We understand that this rupture calls for more than adaptation. It calls for honesty about the world as it is... We know the old order is not coming back." Its consequences for Europe have not yet dawned on us.

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How to end it

The only way to end the tsunami of ripple effects is to end the war. Waiting only lets it reach the scale where it produces chain reactions impossible to control.

Since 2014, the West has tried to stop Russia's war through diplomacy, negotiations and ceasefires; sanctions and economic pressure; diplomatic isolation; military aid, training and intelligence; NATO deterrence and reinforcement; and humanitarian and financial assistance. More than 200 negotiations were held to stop the war from happening.

They were all futile, because Russia was never negotiating in good faith—it sees negotiation as a means to defeat its opponents. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

For a negotiation to succeed, it must solve the cause of the war: Russia's Great Power ambitions, its pursuit of strategic parity with the US and China at the expense of its neighbours. Until that is checked, there will be no peace—and those ambitions are not negotiable. They can only be denied through military power.

The West has done everything short of military intervention. It is time to employ military power, because the cost of continuing the present path is far too high. If Europe wants to turn the tide, it must become proactive. Instead of waiting for the war more intelligence services are warning about, Europe—or rather a Coalition of Like-Minded European countries—must help shift Russia's appraisal of the strategic environment. We need to intervene militarily to end the war, and the tsunami of ripple effects with it.

Hans Petter Midttun

Hans Petter Midttun, independent analyst on hybrid warfare, Non-Resident Fellow at the Centre for Defense Strategies, board member of the Ukrainian Institute for Security and Law of the Sea, former Defense Attaché of Norway to Ukraine, and officer (R) of the Norwegian Armed Forces. 

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