In a sign of how desperate the situation has become on the US-Russia front, the president of the United States of America, Donald Trump, was forced to up the ante against the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, by announcing new sanctions targeting two of Russia’s largest oil companies and postponing his planned meeting with Putin in Budapest indefinitely. That Trump’s patience is now running thin with Putin was clear in his statement: “Every time I speak to Vladimir, I have good conversations and then they don’t go anywhere.” There seems to be a more realistic assessment of the ground realities and of the challenge that Putin is posing. And as a result, Trump finally decided to directly target Russia, something he had avoided doing so far.
This is a far cry from the red carpet that was laid out for the Russian president in Alaska in August when Trump was still hoping that he would make Putin see reason. Despite the danger of legitimising Putin and ending his isolation from the West, Trump’s Alaska outreach underscored a high-profile reset of sorts in US-Russia diplomacy after years of tension. While no deal could be reached, the signalling was unmistakable: the US was ready to engage directly with Russia bypassing Ukraine’s involvement. For Ukraine and America’s European allies, this was concerning as any direct US-Russia talks could sideline Ukraine’s voice in a future agreement, if any. Though Trump had warned Russia of “very severe consequences” if no meaningful progress was made, no formal agreement or ceasefire could be announced at the meeting, with Trump making it clear “there’s no deal until there’s a deal.”
For Russia, having a more direct and cooperative relationship with the US under Trump represented a chance to lessen its global isolation post-Ukraine invasion and gain diplomatic space. And yet, Putin has not ceded any ground when it comes to Ukraine, perhaps recognising the limits of Washington’s choices. In the last few days, the Trump administration has been trying to evaluate its various options — from publicly talking about whether to provide Ukraine with long-range Tomahawk missiles to Trump insisting that Ukraine make territorial concessions to Russia to end the war. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, also reached out to the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and was told, once again, that rather than a ceasefire, Russia wants a peace deal that would address the “root causes” of the war.
This — finally — seems to have led to the decision to not only shelve the Budapest summit but also to turn the heat on Russia, something that Ukraine and its European allies have been demanding for some time now. The US announced it was sanctioning Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two biggest oil companies, to “degrade” Putin’s war chest and argued that the decision was taken because of “Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war”. This announcement coincided with the European Union adopting its 19th sanctions package against Russia which included a ban on imports of Russian liquified natural gas. As expected, Russia shrugged it off, insisting that it “has developed a strong immunity to Western restrictions and will continue to confidently develop its economic and energy potential”. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, on the other hand, welcomed the move as he continues to reiterate that more pressure must be applied on Moscow to bring it to the negotiating table even as he attempts to make a case for long-range weaponry from the West in which he hasn’t gained much traction so far.
Zelensky has much to worry about as winter is approaching. Russian strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure have been ramping up. But the impact of the recent US
sanctions will only be felt if there is some long-term thinking behind this move. It remains far from clear if the Trump administration’s pressure tactic is a one-off to bring Putin to the negotiating table or the first stage of more sustained building of pressure. During his presidential campaign last year, Trump had vowed he could bring the war in Ukraine to an end within hours. He has since walked back on that promise and has ended up admitting that achieving peace has turned out to be more difficult than he anticipated.
Amidst this American policy repositioning, India too faces its own balancing act: continuing to import Russian crude versus the risk of secondary sanctions or trade/ and banking consequences from the US, especially at a time when it is negotiating its own trade pact with America. The consequences for India will also be a function of the depth of the impact of the enforcement of sanctions on the Russia-to-India crude flows: whether Russia finds workarounds, India adapts, or cost base shifts significantly. As global markets ramp up the inflationary pressure due to reduced Russian
export volumes, New Delhi will have to find alternative sources by shifting to the Middle East, Africa and, possibly, the US.
Harsh V. Pant is Professor of International Relations, King’s College London