With "advanced tools," Trump prepares to besiege Putin.

 

Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin

With "advanced tools," Trump prepares to besiege Putin.

A US official and an informed source revealed that the Trump administration has prepared additional sanctions that it may resort to targeting key sectors of the Russian economy if President Vladimir Putin continues to stall on ending the war in Ukraine.

The two sources said that US officials also informed their European counterparts that they support the European Union's use of frozen Russian assets to purchase US weapons for Kyiv, and that Washington has held preliminary internal discussions about leveraging Russian assets in the United States to support the war effort in Ukraine, according to Reuters.

"The next big step"

While it remains unclear whether Washington will actually implement any of these moves in the near term, it demonstrates the administration's sophisticated toolkit to exert further pressure after Trump imposed sanctions on Russia last Wednesday for the first time since returning to office in January.
A senior US official also said that Trump would like European allies to take the next major step against Russia, which could be additional sanctions or tariffs.

A source familiar with the administration's internal dynamics said that Trump will likely postpone any decision for a few weeks to gauge Russia's response to the sanctions targeting the oil companies Lukoil and Rosneft.
These measures caused oil prices to rise by more than $2, prompting major buyers of Russian crude in China and India to seek alternatives.

Banking sector and oil infrastructure

A US official and another source familiar with the matter explained that some of the additional sanctions the United States is preparing target the Russian banking sector and the infrastructure used to transport oil to market.
Ukrainian officials also proposed new sanctions to the United States this month, according to a source familiar with those talks.

Two sources indicated that among the specific ideas being proposed are measures to separate all Russian banks from the dollar-based system used by US banks. However, it remains unclear how seriously Kiev's requests will be considered.

The US Senate is also taking steps, with some lawmakers renewing pressure to pass a long-awaited bipartisan sanctions bill.
A source familiar with the administration's internal dynamics said that Trump is open to supporting the package, but the source ruled out its approval this month.

This comes as Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian president's special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, announced on Friday that he believes his country, the United States, and Ukraine are all approaching a diplomatic solution to end the Russian war in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, spokeswoman for the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, Halina Yosibiuk, expressed her appreciation for the recent sanctions decision. In an email, she wrote, "Dismantling the Russian war machine is the most humane way to end this war."

A week of shocks

Trump's decision to impose sanctions on Russia capped a turbulent week for the administration's policy toward Ukraine. He spoke with Putin on October 16 and then announced that they planned to meet in Budapest, a move that surprised Ukraine.

The next day, Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington, where US officials pressured Zelensky to cede territory in the Donbas region as part of a land swap agreement aimed at ending the war.

However, Zelensky rejected the proposal, and Trump left the meeting with a position calling for a freeze on the current status of the front lines.
Early last week, Russia sent a diplomatic note to Washington reaffirming the previous peace terms. A few days later, Trump announced to reporters that he had canceled the planned meeting with Putin, saying, "It didn't feel right to me."

Meanwhile, Dmitriev told CNN on Friday after arriving in Washington for talks with US officials that the meeting between Trump and Putin had not been canceled, as Trump had claimed, and that the two leaders would likely meet at a later date.

The two US officials said in private conversations that Trump's pursuit of a meeting with Putin "was likely the result of over-enthusiasm," adding that after concluding the ceasefire in Gaza, Trump "overestimated his ability to capitalize on the momentum of one diplomatic achievement to broker another."

Trump ultimately decided to impose sanctions on Russia during a meeting on Wednesday with Treasury Secretary Scott Besant and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to a senior White House official.
Washington's pressure on Europe
Behind the scenes, Ukraine has received clear support from Washington after the US approval process for providing data to Kyiv for long-range strikes targeting Russia's interior was transferred from the Pentagon to the US European Command in Germany, according to US and European officials.
But Trump indicated that he was still not prepared to supply Ukraine with the long-range Tomahawk missiles that Kiev had requested.

The United States is also pressuring Europe to tighten the financial noose on Moscow. Announcing the sanctions, the US Treasury Secretary urged the European Union to take similar steps.
In general, US officials have criticized EU and NATO countries for not taking more decisive action against Russia.

However, a senior EU official stressed that imposing comprehensive sanctions on Lukoil would not be as easy as it would be for the United States, given Lukoil's close ties to the European economy. He added, "I think we need to find a way to disentangle... before we can impose comprehensive sanctions."
The company has refineries in Bulgaria and Romania and a strong network of retail fuel stations across the continent.

It's worth noting that Trump admitted that trying to end Russia's more than three-year-long war in Ukraine was more difficult than he had anticipated.
While European allies hope the US president will continue to increase pressure on Moscow, they are considering taking major measures of their own.