After nine months of attempting to coax Russia into concessions using only incentives – whether by holding talks on repairing diplomatic relations or hosting a major bilateral summit on US soil – the Trump administration in an unexpected reversal announced “massive sanctions” Wednesday on Moscow’s two biggest oil producers.
Just one week earlier, President Donald Trump had backed away from supplying long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine after a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who secured an invitation to a second bilateral summit, this time in Budapest.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, among the more hawkish members of Trump’s Cabinet regarding Ukraine, was tasked with preparing that summit. But Russia’s uncompromising insistence on addressing what it sees as the “root causes” of the conflict finally hit home at the White House. Trump didn’t want to “waste time” at another summit, he said Wednesday, though he left the door open, suggesting that “we’ll do it in the future.”
Trump’s frustration with Russia had clearly been growing in recent months, as it became clear that his much-touted Alaska summit had failed to stop escalating violence in Ukraine. He even shifted his position on Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russia, increasing intelligence sharing to help Kyiv target military and energy facilities, sources told CNN last week.
And yet after multiple threats from Trump to ramp up sanctions against Moscow failed to materialize, and with the call between the two presidents last week suggesting the US leader was still susceptible to Russian persuasion, Wednesday’s move to sanction the Russian oil giants and their subsidiaries blindsided experts.
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