US President Donald Trump is stalling a vote on a bipartisan bill to ramp up sanctions on Russia’s energy sector, two senior Democratic senators warned.
Speaking in Kyiv after spending the weekend at the Munich Security Conference, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said the sanctions measures he has proposed alongside Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) would impose a “sledgehammer of economic pressure” on Russian President Vladimir Putin as US-mediated talks between Kyiv and Moscow resume in Geneva this week. Existing US and European sanctions have recently begun to curb Russia’s oil output, but Blumenthal said more pressure is needed, and that he has been promised a vote before the end of this session of Congress by Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD).
The only obstacle is Trump, Blumenthal said: “We’ve been waiting for a green light, and he has been vacillating back and forth so much that anyone watching him has whiplash.” Still, the administration is making progress in confronting Russia’s “shadow fleet” of sanction-dodging oil tankers, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) said, and has demonstrated from its interventions near Venezuela that the US military is well-prepared to seize more.