moscow
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The Kremlin may have convinced itself that US President Donald Trump does not have the guts to put serious pressure on Russia to end the brutal conflict in Ukraine.
After all, it was a carefully timed call from the Kremlin to the White House last week that persuaded the US president to back off from his threat to provide Kiev with long-range Tomahawk missiles. It was a missile that could bring about big changes on the battlefield.
But new U.S. Treasury sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil companies may finally force Kremlin strongman Vladimir Putin to reevaluate his U.S. counterpart, if not the Ukraine war.
Already an outspoken ally of Putin, Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president and current vice-chairman of Russia’s Security Council, has accused Trump of being “a lip-service peace negotiator who is fully on the path to war with Russia.”
“This is his struggle now, not the aging Biden,” Medvedev added in a social media post, provocatively referring to the former US president.
The sanctions themselves are not particularly harsh. Indeed, oil is vital to Russia’s economy and is funding the Kremlin’s costly war in Ukraine. It is also true that Rosneft and Lukoil, which are subject to sanctions along with dozens of their subsidiaries, are Russia’s most important oil producers.
However, Russia, one of the most sanctioned countries in the world, has proven adept at finding ways around these types of punitive measures in the past. Russia will aim to do so again, according to senior Russian officials.
“This decision does not pose any particular problems for us. Our country has developed a strong immunity to Western regulations and will continue to confidently develop its economic and energy potential,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a televised news conference.
The bigger problem for the Kremlin is that its favorite and tried-and-tested strategy for manipulating President Trump, withholding potential involvement in Ukraine’s peace process and dangling lucrative economic deals while pushing for a relentless military offensive, appears to have stalled.
The US president, who has suspected for months that the Kremlin was merely “aligning him” with Ukraine, has finally decided to take action.
Not only did President Trump impose appropriate sanctions on Russia for the first time since the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but he also “cancelled” a summit with President Vladimir Putin scheduled for Budapest, Hungary.
Just hours ago, Russian officials looked forward to another chance to meet face-to-face with the president and dismissed any suggestion that the summit would be shelved, insisting that there were “no obstacles” and that arrangements were actively underway.
But in retrospect, that optimism appears to have been wishful thinking on the part of the Kremlin. Of course, President Putin is very keen to show the Russian people and the wider world that, despite sanctions and war crimes prosecutions at the International Criminal Court, he is by no means alone on the international stage.
When President Trump, the leader of the world’s most powerful country and the Kremlin boss, rolled out the red carpet in Alaska in August, it was a diplomatic victory for the Kremlin, which had given the White House little in return.
Apparently, unless progress is made on the Ukraine issue, there will be no repeat performance in Budapest. The US Treasury has even hinted that it may impose even stronger sanctions against Russia to pressure the Kremlin into speeding up peace talks.
It could be the beginning of what critics of President Trump’s handling of the Kremlin have long sought. It’s a tough new strategy that will ultimately use the United States’ considerable influence to force Putin to compromise his extremist war goals.
These include the Kremlin’s demand that Kiev hand over strategic territory in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine that Russia has so far been unable to conquer, a red line for the Ukrainian government and its European backers.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the US move was “very important” and essential to “bring Russia to the negotiating table.” Meanwhile, European officials have also expressed satisfaction with Washington’s apparently tougher stance.
But after nine roller-coaster months with Trump’s inauguration, anxiety is ever-present. And in the volatile and capricious world of President Trump, in Kiev, Brussels, and even behind the scenes in Moscow, few doubt that a sudden return to the Kremlin’s perspective might be just another carefully timed friendly phone call without President Putin.
