Bravo to Team Trump for bringing the hammer down on Russia with its most significant sanctions yet — the only way to convince Vladimir Putin that refusing to make peace is a dead end.
The sanctions, levied against Russia’s top two energy companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, show the White House is ready to start dealing out hefty punishments for Moscow’s obstinance after a call between Trump and Putin last week.
The Kremlin’s insistence, after that call, that Russia won’t drop impossible demands, left the prez no reason to go face-to-face with Mad Vlad in Budapest.
Crippling the energy sector is a strike at the heart of Putin’s war economy.
Upping the ante, the European Union immediately followed Trump’s lead with its own sanctions, including a ban on Russian liquefied natural gas imports — another whack at Putin’s pockets, since Europe is the No. 1 buyer of the stuff.
This is what’s needed to get peace: a coordinated, US-led pressure campaign that hits Moscow where it hurts.
Yes, Trump has cooled on sending Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv (arguing that they’re too complex to use without months of training), a decision that Kyiv thinks led Russia to back off on making concessions.
But the president’s reasoning is fair enough: He doesn’t want unintended deaths on his hands if Ukrainian soldiers misfire a weapon the US gave them.
And it’s not clear how much they’re needed; Ukraine pulled off a successful strike on a Russian chemical plant with UK-made Storm Shadow missiles on Tuesday, proving that it can hit hard without Tomahawks.
Trump denied a Wall Street Journal report Wednesday that Washington lifted restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western-provided long-range missiles within Russia before the attack, but it hardly matters; an already paranoid Putin is left to fear how far the White House might still go.
All good, and Trump can next twist some more screws.
He can go after Putin’s other cash cow: his lapdog oligarchs, who prosper thanks to their Kremlin ties while funding Moscow’s war machine.
Many of these toadies have made money off the deaths of Ukrainians, raking in cash from ramped-up weapons manufacturing.
Wednesday’s EU sanctions package hit oligarchs hard, blocking them from accessing funding or economic resources and traveling to Europe.
The Trump team should tighten the noose on Putin’s puppets even further, broadening the US list of sanctioned individuals, seizing and freezing assets and closing loopholes so that intermediaries can’t do business on the oligarchs’ behalf.
A good start: Yelena Baturina and Vladimir Yevtushenkov, two Hunter Biden-linked Russian billionaires conspicuously left off President Joe Biden’s sanction lists.
Send a message to Putin: He and his cronies will get no quarter from the civilized world.
Make him see he has no path forward unless he gives up his grotesque fantasies of wiping Ukraine off the map.
America and its allies have to keep bringing the pain until Moscow cries “uncle.”