Whoa! Trump just stood up to Putin
It could be a game-changer if Trump is really willing to squeeze Russia to end its barbaric war in Ukraine.
President Trump has many familiar behavioral patterns. He shocks people to delight his own fans. He plays the victim to exalt himself. He threatens mayhem but relents before it boomerangs back on him.
We may now be witnessing the end of an old Trump pattern and the onset of a new one. For years, dating to his first presidency, Trump has praised and deferred to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin—even after Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But Trump has finally imposed new sanctions on Russia that seem serious and are likely to hurt. If he keeps up the pressure, it would be an important flip-flop that might strengthen Trump’s foreign-policy cred and possibly hasten the end of the biggest European conflict since World War II.
On October 22, Trump announced new sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil. The sanctions are meant to isolate the two giant oil companies from the global financial system, making it harder for them to generate revenue that’s a major source of financing for Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Russia already faces a battery of western sanctions, and a couple more aren’t going to drive Russian forces from Ukraine. But Russia’s energy sector is under particular stress at the moment, and Trump is hitting Russia where it hurts. Trump—finally!—may have figured out that Putin is playing him and is not about to boost anybody’s odds of winning a Nobel Peace Prize.
“Every time I speak to Vladimir, I have good conversations and then they don’t go anywhere,” Trump told reporters on October 22, explaining his decision to impose sanctions. “I just felt it was time.”
A lot of foreign-policy experts will tell you it was time to get tougher on Putin in the Biden administration. Biden did impose numerous sanctions on Russia and approve billions in military aid for Ukraine. But there’s also a lot he didn’t do. Biden was always slow to give Ukraine American tanks, missiles and other advanced weapons, fearing it would push Putin over some imaginary red line and trigger a Russian attack on NATO or even a nuclear detonation. Biden was also reluctant to sanction Russian energy in ways that would raise prices for Americans, given that gasoline prices hit a record high of $5 per gallon in 2022, with many voters blaming Biden.
Trump has been even worse, up till now. He has toyed with the idea of cutting off US aid to Ukraine completely, which could doom the besieged nation. Trump has deluded himself into believing that his dealmaking acumen will help him get the peace deal Biden couldn’t. Russia experts have been howling at Trump, explaining that Putin is a dick no matter who the American president is. Trump, who knows more than all the experts combined, had to learn it for himself.
He finally seems to have learned. The new sanctions, which go fully into effect November 21, are serious enough to have pushed global oil prices up by nearly $4 per barrel, or about 5%. That’s a sign traders anticipate a further decline in supplies from Russia, which is still the world’s third largest oil supplier.
Analysts sense seriousness in Trump’s move against Putin. Daniel Fried of the Atlantic Council, a former assistant secretary of state, describes the new sanctions as “a welcome warning shot to Putin to get serious about ending the war.” Trump also canceled a meeting he was supposed to have with Putin in Budapest in coming days, probably to avoid the sort of embarrassment he endured after an August “summit” meeting with Putin in Alaska produced nothing but intensified Russian strikes on Ukraine.
Targeting Rosneft and Lukoil also stings because Ukraine has been successfully attacking Russian energy infrastructure since August, using weapons of its own design. Russia’s revenue from oil exports has dropped sharply, just as Ukraine wants. Shortages inside Russia have caused soaring prices for gasoline and other fuels, long waits at filling stations and blackouts in some regions. That brings the consequences of the war back home to ordinary Russians.
Ukraine has been shrewdly going after refineries and other bottlenecks that are costly and complicated to repair. The International Energy Agency predicts that the damage as it stands now will keep Russian energy production suppressed until at least the middle of next year. Ukraine obviously hopes to extend that.
One muscular move by Trump won’t make a difference if he backslides. The real question is whether Trump is now convinced for good that he has to raise the pressure on Putin to move the needle on any kind of cease-fire or peace deal.
If Trump intends to ratchet up the pressure, he could tighten existing sanctions meant to cap the price Russia can charge for its oil. He could do more to interrupt the “ghost fleet” of tankers Russia uses to evade sanctions on its oil deliveries. Trump could also stop squawking about Ukraine ceding terrain or making concessions to Putin that are abhorrent to the Ukrainians who have been fighting and dying.
He could also provide more military and intelligence aid to Ukraine. It would really get Putin’s attention if Trump gave Ukraine weapons able to strike deep into Russia, and permission to use them. Trump recently suggested he might give Ukraine the storied Tomahawk missile, but that’s either a feint or a bluff. The Tomahawk is a ship-based weapon Ukraine does not have the ability to launch, and Putin must know that. The Pentagon has other weapons that would do the job, so watch for moves to deliver those.
If Trump really wants to stand up to Putin, maybe he will be able to end the war within a year or two. But being a tough guy means he’ll need to hold the pose for months or even years, without flinching. The old president would have to learn new tricks.