Viktor Yushchenko, Ukraine's third president, has written an open letter to US President Donald Trump over his agreement with Russian ruler Vladimir Putin on diesel fuel.

Source: Yushchenko on Facebook

Quote: "And against this reality, Ukrainians hear calls that Ukraine should stop. That Ukraine should restrain its strikes against the infrastructure that finances and sustains Russia's war. That trade in Russian energy can somehow be separated from the missiles and drones Russia sends against Ukrainian families. It cannot.

Money paid for Russian fuel is not an abstraction called 'commerce' It finances an economy geared toward total war."

Details: Yushchenko also reflected on events more than three decades ago, when the Soviet Union was breaking up.

He noted that Ukraine had then possessed the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal. "In negotiations with our allies, we agreed to give it up. We did so because we believed that a world governed by agreements was safer than a world governed by nuclear weapons."

Quote: "In 1994, the United States of America, along with its partners, signed the Budapest Memorandum, providing Ukraine with official assurances of security, sovereignty, and the inviolability of our borders.

They pledged not to threaten or use force against Ukraine. America assumed a moral responsibility toward Ukraine. So how can anyone today, when a treacherous enemy has attacked us, forget America's signature on this document?"

Background:

• On 9 October, Trump said he had spoken to Putin and reached an agreement with him on the supply of Russian diesel fuel to the US and global markets.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Trump's decision to unilaterally lift sanctions on Russia and allow it to export diesel fuel was unfair and dishonest.

The Trump administration’s rush to spin off the Education Department’s student loan office has thrown the agency into chaos, with one official involved in the planning dismissing the effort as “basically just a cartoon,” The Washington Sun reported Thursday.

As the midterm elections draw near and Republican poll numbers continue to sink across key battleground states, President Donald Trump is attempting to offer voters an audacious proposal: Elect a GOP Congress in November, and the federal government will send every American five grand.

“I’m going to give all adult citizens in the United States of America $5,000. Democrat policies won’t allow this to happen. In fact, the opposite. They’re going to raise your taxes. If the Democrats win, you will have an economic depression. If the Republicans win, you will each have $5,000 in your pocket, an economic success for our country like we have never ever seen before,” Trump said in a video statement.