President Donald Trump pulled the trigger on sanctions that European Union leaders and American neocons have long urged him to impose on Russia. An analyst for the Ron Paul Institute said this makes it “Trump’s war now.”
The new round of sanctions are part of a one-two economic punch to Russia’s major source of revenue — energy. The EU also leveled sanctions. Making matters worse for the Russians are the British Storm Shadow cruise missile that hit a Russian rocket fuel plant earlier this week, indicating a recent upgrade in Ukrainian military capabilities and permissions for their use.
The United States had already leveled thousands of sanctions on Russia since 2022, but this is the first time the Trump administration has imposed any. Trump’s sanctions decision came after he canceled his upcoming in-person meeting in Budapest with Vladimir Putin, saying he didn’t believe anything would come of it. Trump said, “In terms of honesty, the only thing I can say is, every time I speak with Vladimir, I have good conversations, and then they don’t go anywhere.” Regarding the sanctions, he told reporters on Wednesday, “I just felt it was time. We waited a long time. I thought that we’d go long before the Middle East. It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get.” The U.S. president said he’s still open to meeting with Putin in the future.
The EU is also expected to roll out a new system that will limit “the movement of Russian diplomats within the 27-nation EU,” according to the Associated Press.
“Today is a good day for Europe and Ukraine,” Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen beamed in a statement during an EU summit in Brussels on Thursday.
Russian Oil Sanctioned
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday that the “Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine.” The goal was to “degrade the Kremlin’s ability to raise revenue for its war machine and support its weakened economy,” since Putin refuses to “end this senseless war,” Bessent said in a statement.
The sanctions target Russian companies Open Joint Stock Company Rosneft Oil Company (Rosneft) and Lukoil OAO (Lukoil). Both explore, extract, transport, and sell energy. Rosneft does so with petroleum, petroleum products, and natural gas; and Lukoil with oil and gas. The sanctions also target a number of Roseneft and Lukoil subsidiaries.
American consumers will likely feel the boomerang effect of the sanctions. Oil prices jumped on Thursday, as U.S. benchmark crude jumped six percent, to $62 per barrel. The head of petroleum analysis for GasBuddy Patrick De Haan said Americans will probably be paying more at the pump by next week.
The sanctions have already prompted Chinese state-owned companies to pause their buying of seaborne Russian oil, according to Reuters, which reported: “The move comes as refiners in India, the largest buyer of seaborne Russian oil, are set to sharply cut their crude imports from Moscow, to comply with the U.S. sanctions imposed over the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.”
Frozen Assets
The Europeans are also working on a plan to seize billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets and give it to Ukraine, which would use it to buy weapons. “The biggest tranche of frozen assets — some $225 billion worth — are held in Belgium, and the Belgian government has been “reluctant to take any risks on using the money without firm guarantees from its European partners,” the AP reported. Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever called on all EU members “to share the costs of any legal action pursued by Russia and contribute financially if the money ever had to be paid back. He also said Russian frozen assets held by other countries should be part of the scheme.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky criticized the European hesitation to seize those funds. “Anyone who delays the decision on the full use of frozen Russian assets is not only limiting our defense, but also slowing down the EU’s own progress,” he told EU leaders.
Strong Immunity
The Russians have publicly responded to the announcement of the sanctions with a shrug, sort of. The new sanctions “will not cause problems for Russia, which has developed a strong immunity to such restrictions,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. However, she added, “We consider this step to be exclusively counterproductive.”
As for the seizure of Russian assets, Putin has said it “would fundamentally undermine all principles of international economic activity and, without a doubt, cause enormous harm to the … international financial system.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has called it outright stealing. “These plans are all about the illegal seizure of Russian property. We are talking about theft,” he told reporters on Wednesday. “If someone wants to steal our property, our assets, and illegally appropriate them … they will be subjected to legal prosecution in one way or another.”
Russia’s tough-talking former presidential figurehead, Dmitry Medvedev, had an even more hawkish response. “The USA is our adversary, and their loquacious ‘peacemaker’ has now fully taken up the path of war with Russia,” Medvedev said in a social-media post.
Nevertheless, the Kremlin said it sees no reason not to continue discussing a peace deal. But it doesn’t appear that Ukraine and the Europeans have any intention of sitting around and waiting.
Ukrainian Strike
On Tuesday, Ukraine hit a Russian plant in Bryansk with British Storm Shadow cruise missiles. The plant produced explosives and rocket fuel. According to The Wall Street Journal, the strike came after “authority for supporting such attacks was recently transferred from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon to the top U.S. general in Europe, Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, who also serves as NATO commander.” Nevertheless, the United States can “restrict Ukraine’s use of Storm Shadow because the missiles use American targeting data,” the Journal reported. Trump responded to the article by calling it “fake news.” He said in a Truth Social Post, “The U.S. has nothing to do with those missiles, wherever they may come from, or what Ukraine does with them!”
Ukrainians have used Storm Shadows before, but after Trump’s reelection, “the Pentagon set up a review procedure for approving cross-border strikes using U.S. missiles or those from other countries, including Storm Shadow, that rely on U.S. targeting data,” according to reports.
Trump’s War
Former Congressman Ron Paul said Thursday during his daily Liberty Report that he doesn’t understand how Trump’s foreign policy, the part that includes Venezuela as well, fits within the definition of “America First.” Paul also noted that before the Trump administration announced the sanctions, “NATO uber-hawk Mark Rutte was in town … bending Trump’s ear.”
Paul believes NATO started this war against Russia 11 years ago, when it planned and carried out a “coup” with in Ukraine, referring to the Maidan Revolution. He also noted the absurdity of a country $38 trillion in debt continuing to send money to fuel a war half a world away. While the Trump administration has not allocated any new funding packages for Ukraine, the money is still flowing thanks to unspent prior allocations.
Paul said these sanctions and the idea of freezing assets reminds him of what the United States did to Japan in the 1940s. It doesn’t mean the Japanese were justified in their attack on Pearl Harbor, he added, but it shows that “sanctions don’t work and it leads to a lot of trouble.”
Paul’s co-host Daniel McAdams said “Trump has crossed the Rubicon with this.” McAdams added this move “marks the day that this literally became Trump’s war.” McAdams :
“This is the first time that the Trump administration has put sanctions on Russia. You cannot be a neutral mediator in a conflict, or pretend to be, and then sanction one side. You obviously are on the other side.… This is a huge jump in the water of the war.”
