A massive sanctions threat hangs over Putin

Politico

2 days ago

With help from Felicia Schwartz, Diya Contractor, Jordain Carney, Nahal Toosi and Daniel Lippman
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There's a major new threat to Russia's already sanction-battered economy. It's sitting in procedural limbo in the U.S. Senate — at least for now.
Sens. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-S.C.) and RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-Conn.) introduced a sweeping sanctions bill two months ago that would impose direct and secondary sanctions on Russia's wartime economy.
So far, the Republican-controlled majority has yet to bring the bill to the floor for a vote to give President DONALD TRUMP and his administration room to negotiate peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. But that may soon change.
Congress' patience with Moscow is wearing thin as Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN slow-walks peace talks.
The sanctions bill already has 80 co-sponsors, meaning it is all but guaranteed to pass. That puts more pressure on Senate Majority Leader JOHN THUNE from his caucus to move the bill forward.
'It's got a huge number, bipartisan number of cosponsors on the legislation, and I think a genuine interest in doing something to make clear to Russia that they need to get the table,' Thune told reporters today when asked about the sanctions bill. 'We're working with the White House to try and ensure that what we do and when we do it works well with the negotiations that they've got underway.'
He said the bill 'very well could be something that we would take up in this work period,' but didn't offer more specifics on timing.
Graham and Blumenthal visited Kyiv over the weekend and stopped in Brussels today. Graham said he expects the Senate to consider the sanctions package before a major Group of 7, or G7, summit in two weeks.
Their bill has generated a lot of buzz in Ukraine and European capitals. Kyiv's closest allies see it as the best way to tighten the screws on Russia in the Trump era.
European Commission President URSULA VON DER LEYEN said she welcomed the prospect of more U.S. sanctions on Russia after meeting with Graham and Blumenthal today. The meeting came as the EU prepared its own sanctions package against Russia.
'Pressure works, as the Kremlin understands nothing else,' von der Leyen said in a statement.
Trump has occasionally vented about Russia in posts on Truth Social as negotiations over ending the war hit a slump, but he has yet to impose new significant punishments on Moscow. The Trump administration's support for moving forward with the bill would offer the clearest sign from Kyiv and wary NATO allies that Trump was finally ready to play hardball with Putin.
'Now we are really expecting [Trump] to support sanctions, to stop the war, at least to go to the first stage of stopping this war — a ceasefire,' Ukrainian President VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY told reporters today.
'I believe that with the strong position of the United States of America, we will be able to achieve this faster,' he added.
U.S. weapons shipments to Ukraine, set up during the Biden administration, are still flowing and Biden-era sanctions against Russia remain in place.
The secondary sanctions portion of the Graham-Blumenthal bill is particularly significant, and calls for a 500 percent tariff on imported goods from countries that buy Russian oil, gas, uranium and other commodities.
Russia and Ukraine held their latest round of peace talks in Turkey today. Though both sides agreed to exchange a new batch of severely wounded and ill prisoners, the discussion didn't yield any major breakthroughs, as our colleague Veronika reports from Kyiv.
The Inbox
CONCESSIONS: The Trump administration is giving ground on its insistence that Iran not be allowed to enrich uranium as part of a nuclear deal, Axios reports today.
In the most recent U.S. proposal to Iran, transmitted over the weekend, the Trump administration said Tehran could undertake limited low-level uranium enrichment for a to-be-determined period of time.
At the start of the negotiations, Trump's Special Envoy STEVE WITKOFF had initially said that Iran could be allowed to enrich uranium in a deal if subject to strict monitoring and verification. But he soon backtracked after facing criticism from Republicans and said the deal would not allow any Iranian enrichment.
Privately, however, administration officials said that they might allow Tehran to enrich uranium at low levels — a red line for the Islamic Republic in accepting a deal. The shift suggests that the Trump team is showing flexibility to see if Tehran is serious about reaching an agreement.
SPIDER WEB: Ukraine launched a massive drone attack across Russia that damaged or destroyed 41 of Moscow's long-range strategic bombers, as our colleague Veronika Melkozerova reports today from Kyiv.
'Russia has now understood the true meaning of the word demilitarization,' a Ukrainian security official told Veronika.
Analysts in Washington said the impact of the attacks was significant, not just as a boost for Ukraine's wartime morale but for Russia's military capabilities.
'Russia routinely uses these bombers to conduct missile strikes in Ukraine, often hitting civilian targets. Taking out these bombers reduces Russia's long-range strike capacity and raises the cost of Moscow's continued aggression,' said JOHN HARDIE, deputy director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' Russia program.
LEAST BAD OPTION: The Trump administration has said it won't oppose the transitional Syrian government's plan to integrate thousands of former jihadist rebel fighters into its army, as Trump's Turkey and Syria envoy THOMAS BARRACK told Reuters today.
It marks a shift from past U.S. policy, as previous administrations opposed incorporating these fighters into the government's armed forces.
He added that it was better to incorporate the fighters into a state project to rebuild the military rather than exclude them, which could leave them vulnerable to reformist groups that could challenge the fragile new government, or lead them to link up with other extremist militant groups such as ISIS.
WHERE'S AUSTIN TICE? Speaking of Syria, a BBC investigation out today confirms that AUSTIN TICE, the American freelance journalist who disappeared in Syria over a decade ago, was held by the now-ousted regime of former Syrian dictator BASHAR ASSAD.
Documents reviewed by the BBC show that despite the Assad regime's claims that Tice was never in its custody, he was indeed captured by a pro-Assad paramilitary group and held in a prison in Damascus. The documents provide no additional insights into Tice's current whereabouts, and his location after February 2013 is not listed in the files.
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On the Hill
FIRST IN NATSEC DAILY — HFAC'S STATE RESTRUCTURE PLANS: Republican staff on the House Foreign Affairs Committee briefed staff today on how the process for restructuring the State Department will work legislatively.
The State Department's organizational chart, once Congress gets involved, will look different from the one Secretary of State MARCO RUBIO released last month. For one, State will create a chief financial officer role, per a mockup of the potential organizational chart viewed by NatSec Daily.
That CFO will oversee a new assistant secretary for Special Diplomatic Missions, who will oversee all special envoys. State will eliminate all existing special envoys, except for the State Department special envoy to Combat Antisemitism, a special envoy for the Abraham Accords and the special envoy for Hostage Affairs. A special envoy for Holocaust Affairs will also be created.
A congressional staffer, granted anonymity to speak publicly about the legislative work in the restructuring, explained that the goal of these efforts is for Congress to take back power over foreign policy. But there are already worries that Congress' oversight may be limited, as the bill will eliminate most of the recurring reports State has to send Congress.
A spokesperson for Chair BRIAN MAST (R-Fla.) did not respond to a request for comment. Personnel issues aren't being touched in this reauthorization effort, per the staffer, and Congress is expected to take up those issues in a separate bill later this year.
Broadsides
WAR CRIMES ACCUSATION: A former senior Biden official who was the face of the administration's routine defense of its Israel policy said Israel was committing war crimes.
MATTHEW MILLER, who served as State Department spokesperson from 2023 through the end of the Biden administration, told Sky News in a new interview released today: 'I don't think it's a genocide, but I think it is without a doubt true that Israel has committed war crimes.'
When asked why he never vocalized this during his time in the administration, he said: 'When you're at the podium, you're not expressing your personal opinion. You're expressing the conclusions of the United States government. The United States government had not concluded that they committed war crimes, still have not concluded.'
Miller is one of the highest-profile former Biden administration officials to publicly rebuke Israel for its conduct of the war in Gaza since leaving office.
Transitions
— FIRST IN NATSEC DAILY: TIM MEISBURGER is leaving the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance at the diminished U.S. Agency for International Development for a role at the Peace Corps, a U.S. official and a person familiar with the issue told our own Nahal Toosi and Daniel Lippman. Nahal and Daniel also obtained a farewell note written by Meisburger, a political appointee, who told bureau staffers he knew his time 'has been a time of turmoil,' alluding to the Trump administration's swift dismantling of USAID. Meisburger added that he admired the USAID staff. 'Your quiet competence and professionalism in the midst of a hurricane not of your making is astonishing, but perhaps should not be, given your calling,' he wrote. The Peace Corps, too, is a target of the administration's plans to downsize government. Meisburger did not respond to a request for comment, but the Peace Corps media office said he would serve as a senior adviser in the office of the director. It also noted that Meisburger served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho from 1988-1990.
— PHILIP BEDNARCZYK is now director of the German Marshall Fund's Warsaw office. He previously was an adviser for Europe and Eurasia for the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
— MEGAN APPER is joining the Council on Foreign Relations as director of media relations and communications strategy. Apper most recently was senior spokesperson for international affairs at the Treasury Department.
— The Middle East Institute is adding NATAN SACHS as a senior fellow. Sachs previously served as director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
— ANNA NEWBY is now director of global policy communications at Micron. She previously was director of communications at the National Nuclear Security Administration.
What to Read
— Elisabeth Braw, POLITICO: Gig model of Russian subversion is a nightmare for Western intelligence services
— Justyna Gudzowska and Laura Ferris, Foreign Affairs: The War on Trees: How Illegal Logging Funds Cartels, Terrorists, and Rogue Regimes
— Gideon Rachman, Financial Times: Trump always chickens out on foreign policy too
Tomorrow Today
— Atlantic Council's Europe Center, 9 a.m.: 'Securing Europe — With or Without the United States?' as part of Warsaw Week 2025: Retooling the Transatlantic Alliance for an Era of Uncertainty.'
— Center for a New American Security, 9 a.m.: Virtual 2025 National Security Conference with the theme 'America's Edge.'
— Hudson Institute, 12:30 p.m.: A book discussion on 'Unbroken: One Uyghur's Fight for Freedom.'
— Brookings Institution, 2 p.m.: The United States, China, and the War in Ukraine
— Center for Strategic and International Studies, 4:30 p.m.: South Korea's New President
Thanks to our editors, Rosie Perper and Katherine Long, who should also face congressional sanctions.