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Trump administration has taken drastic new steps sanctions against russia As President Donald Trump presses for talks to end the four-year-old war against Moscow ukraine Appears to be at a standstill.
The Treasury Department said Wednesday it was sanctioning Russia’s two biggest petroleum producing companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, as part of an effort to focus attention on the energy sector, which Moscow has used to fund its war effort since its invasion of Ukraine.
The Treasury said the new sanctions were “the result of Russia’s lack of serious commitment to the peace process to end the war in Ukraine” and were meant to “increase pressure on Russia’s energy sector and reduce the Kremlin’s ability to raise revenue for its war machine and support its weak economy.”
In a statement, Treasury Secretary Scott Besant said it was “now time to stop the killing and an immediate ceasefire” and pledged to take “further action if necessary to support President Trump’s effort to end another war” while calling on U.S. allies to join the U.S. effort while abiding by the new sanctions.
He also said that the sanctions were due to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “refusal to end this senseless war”.
Besant made the comments when NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte arrived at the White House to sit with Trump.
As he sat next to Rutte in the Oval Office, the president told reporters he thought now was the time to impose new sanctions against Moscow and said it was “a huge day” in the U.S. effort to support Ukraine as a result.
“These are very big, they are against the big oil companies and we hope they won’t last long,” he said.
Trump said he hoped the long-running war would be resolved “soon” and said he would prefer both sides to “take the long-standing line and move forward.”
Asked if he believed the new sanctions would have an impact, Trump responded that he believed they “definitely” would.
“They’re massive sanctions, embargoes on oil, the two biggest oil companies, the biggest in the world, but they’re Russian. They make a lot of oil, and hopefully that will go forward, hopefully that [Putin] Will be fair, and hopefully Zelensky will also be fair,” he said.
News of the new sanctions comes just a day after the White House walked back Trump’s earlier claim that he would meet with the Russian president. Vladimir Putin in Budapest in the coming weeks.
A White House official said Independent Said on Tuesday there were “no plans” for it One-on-one meeting between Trump and Putin “in the immediate future” because the Secretary of State marco rubio Had a “productive call” with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, saying an in-person meeting between the two top diplomats was “not necessary”.
Trump later told reporters at a Diwali celebration late Tuesday that he did not want to have a “pointless meeting” or a “waste of time,” but did not rule out a meeting in the future.
“We’ll see what happens,” he said, later adding that there could be an update on a possible meeting in the “next two days.”
Just days earlier, Trump had touted a similarly “productive” call with Putin before meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House last Friday, after which he wrote on Truth Social that he and Putin would meet in the Hungarian capital “in hopes of finding a way to end this ‘disgraceful’ war.”
But, according to administration officials, the decision was made to cancel the planned meeting between Rubio and Lavrov and the subsequent summit between Trump and Putin after it became clear. Russia He will not agree to give up his insistence that any ceasefire deal with Kiev give Moscow all of Ukraine’s Donbass province, even though that region is still hotly contested between the two countries’ armies.
Besant’s irritation about the new sanctions also follows moves by the Senate to advance a series of anti-Russian measures, including bills in the upper house’s Foreign Relations Committee to disrupt Russia’s ties with China and accelerate efforts to use frozen Russian assets to finance Ukraine’s defense.
The panel passed the measures on a bipartisan basis, with Ranking Member Jeanne Shaheen calling the development “a clear signal that Congress is ready and willing to take action” to hold Putin accountable through legislation if Trump refuses to act.
He said, “I’m pleased that President Trump canceled his planned summit with Putin – it should never have been scheduled without a ceasefire. But words are not enough. Now is the time for action.”