About the Claim That “the U.S. Is Discussing a Multibillion-Dollar Oil Deal With Russia as Part of a Settlement With Ukraine...”
About the claim that “the U.S. is discussing a multibillion-dollar oil deal with Russia as part of a settlement with Ukraine.”
Well... it is not exactly completely wrong, but it is a bit of a stretch.
What is all the fuss actually about?
As you remember, a year ago the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on “Lukoil” and “Rosneft” and ruled that “Lukoil” must sell its foreign assets.
That began a year-long saga of selling those assets, and it is still going on today.
First, under cover of all the noise, Gennady Timchenko’s Gunvor tried to buy them; the U.S. Treasury rejected the deal. Then they were supposedly set to be sold to “Carlyle” (an investment fund close to Trump, but without direct involvement by the Trump family), but Trump fell out with one of its founders, David Rubenstein, fired him from everywhere he possibly could, and everything stalled.
And now, as The New York Times reports, the sale of “Lukoil’s” foreign assets is being discussed to a fund belonging to sports investor Todd Boehly, who donated
And yes, the Al-Khayyat brothers are partners of Ivanka Trump (Trump’s eldest daughter) in developing resort real estate in Albania, while Sheikh Tahnoon has capital in the funds of Trump’s sons and Witkoff.
So look: on the one hand, yes, it is fucked up, Trump is selling “Lukoil’s” assets practically to his own family.
On the other hand... what did you expect from Trump, that he would sell the assets to Hunter Biden? Or hold an honest tender and let some “Chevron” buy them? (“Chevron,” by the way, had shown interest).
Of course we would all like “Lukoil’s” assets to go to some competent Western giant, but since you and I live not in an ideal world but in the real one, it is better to let Trump’s family carve them up together with the sheikhs than for the Kremlin to keep owning them.
And the tie-in to Ukraine here is really only incidental. Simply because the deal over “Lukoil’s” assets was discussed at Witkoff and Kushner’s meeting in the Kremlin on September 5. How is that connected to a peace settlement? In no way at all.