The announcement by the Trump administration of its first financial sanctions against Russia over Ukraine marks a significant and welcome upping of pressure on Moscow’s ability to wage war.
It comes a week after the EU approved its 19th round of sanctions, including a tighter transaction ban on Rosneft and Gazprom Neft, a ban on Russian LNG imports by January 2027, and the targeting of a further 117 vessels from Russia’s “shadow fleet” of oil tankers, which have circumvented earlier controls.
Yesterday, EU leaders also debated how to free up use of Russia’s frozen assets for a €140 billion loan for Ukraine. They would have been reassured by what they saw as a new confirmation of US commitment to Ukraine and willingness to confront President Putin, after repeated mixed signals from Washington.
The proposed US measures against Russia’s two biggest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, and secondary measures against subsidiaries and those trading with them, could push Chinese and Indian buyers to stop buying as much Russian oil.
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The move, and the cancellation two days earlier by Trump of a Budapest meeting with President Putin, were denounced by former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev as “an act of war” against Russia. “Now Trump has fully aligned himself with loony Europe,” he claimed.
There is no doubt it represents an important shift in tone in the US-Russia relationship since the reportedly warm phone call between the two presidents last Thursday, where the Budapest meeting had been mooted. This now seems to have been largely a pretext on Trump’s part– citing the “danger” of pre-empting potential negotiations – to deflect unwanted pressure to supply Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles.
That missile supply is still not on the cards, reflecting Trump’s determination not to escalate military involvement by the US and does not, Medvedev’s claim notwithstanding, make it by any means as “fully aligned” with European solidarity as Ukraine’s EU friends would wish.
