The narrative now being pushed by U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent is not just wrong - it is harmful. On September 2, while explaining rising energy prices, Bessent placed the war with Iran and Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure side by side. According to him, Ukraine "has decided that they want to blow up Russian energy assets," and this is creating additional pressure on global prices. In this explanation, Ukraine is transformed from a victim of Russian aggression into one of the causes of a global problem. It reverses cause and effect. The current energy crisis was caused by wars, not by Ukraine. The main shock came from the U.S. war with Iran. The fighting disrupted shipping, refinery operations, and oil supplies. According to estimates by the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy, at one point refinery activity in Asia and the Middle East fell by more than 7.5 million barrels per day compared with prewar levels. This hit the supply of diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel particularly hard. The second source of instability is Russia’s war against Ukraine. It was Russia that made energy part of this war: energy revenues finance the Russian budget and the war, while Ukraine’s energy system has systematically remained one of the main targets of Russian attacks. Ukraine, in response, strikes the resources that allow Russia to continue the war. The causal chain therefore does not begin with Ukrainian self-defense. It begins with Russian aggression. This is the key link Bessent removes from his explanation. His claim that Ukraine simply "decided" to attack Russian energy facilities creates the impression that Ukrainian strikes are an independent source of instability, unrelated to the war. In reality, it is much simpler: if Russia ends the war, the reason for Ukraine to attack Russia’s energy and military capabilities disappears. At the same time, Bessent’s statement shows that Ukraine’s campaign against Russian oil refining has become a serious problem for Russia. And it is precisely the effectiveness of these strikes that has now created a problem for Washington. The United States wants to reduce Russia’s energy revenues, but it does not want Russian supply on the global market to decline. The American logic is for Russia to continue supplying energy resources while earning less from them. Ukraine is guided by only one logic - survival: Russia must lose the resources and capabilities it needs to continue the war. This contradiction becomes especially acute because of the U.S. midterm elections on November 3. High gasoline prices directly hit the Trump administration. It therefore needs to explain to American voters why fuel is becoming more expensive. But Bessent’s convenient explanation is also a very advantageous narrative for Moscow. Russia has long been convincing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America that high prices and economic problems are caused not by Russia’s war, but by Western sanctions and Ukraine’s actions. The logic of this narrative is simple: the problem is supposedly not the aggression, but the attempts to resist it. Moscow can now point to the words of the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury as confirmation of this thesis. The correct narrative is that Ukraine did not create the current energy crisis. Wars did. The U.S. war with Iran disrupted one of the world’s most important energy routes. Russia is waging war against Ukraine and using its energy economy to finance it. Ukraine is defending itself and striking the resources of the state that attacked it. The way out of this crisis must also be sought in its causes. Bessent effectively acknowledges this logic when he talks about Iran: once the war ends, pressure on the energy market will ease. The same principle should apply to Russia. Once Russia’s war against Ukraine ends, the reason for Ukrainian strikes on Russian energy infrastructure will disappear. If the goal is to stabilize the global energy market, the answer is to end wars, not to demand that Ukraine preserve the resources of the state waging war against it.