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Senate Republican leaders are waiting on President Donald Trump to greenlight an aggressive bid to sanction Russia. Some of their own members aren’t interested in delay.
“I’m not waiting for anything. I think we should bring it to the floor and put the hurt on Putin,” Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., told Semafor.
“I’m not looking to anyone else for guidance on this. I’ve waited long enough,” Young added. “And it’s pretty clear to me that Putin has been jerking us around for months, and I don’t think the United States of America should tolerate that.”
Trump’s roller-coaster of engagement with Russia on ending its war on Ukraine has sapped momentum among senior GOP senators to move Sen. Lindsey Graham’s bill that would impose tough new penalties, both on Russia and countries that trade with it. Trump spoke to Putin on Monday, saying afterward that Russia wants to resume trade with the US after the war ends and that he isn’t inclined to align with Europe on new sanctions.
Russia, however, may be an exception to an emerging rule of this Congress: that Republicans will do whatever they can to avoid breaking with Trump. A growing number of GOP senators feel that they may have to make a move to hurry Trump along in the talks. Some of them see their action — blessed by the White House or not — as strengthening Trump’s hand in his dealings with Vladimir Putin.
“We can hang on to it, or we can move now. It doesn’t mean he has to sign it into law right now, but absolutely we want to keep moving forward so that Vladimir Putin knows we are serious. That guy is stringing President Trump along. We don’t appreciate it,” said Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa.
Republicans are leaving presidential diplomacy to Graham, who argued on the Senate floor on Wednesday for the US to take on Putin more aggressively. The South Carolina Republican also noted how hard it is to get 81 senators in both parties to agree to anything these days; that’s how many are backing his bill.
That number includes Republicans who have both supported and opposed Ukraine aid bills over the past three years. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., estimated as many as 70 senators would support the bill even if Trump didn’t explicitly back it.
“This is a case where nobody likes to see somebody try to play the president,” Rounds said, referring to Putin’s handling of negotiations. “And that’s one thing that Democrats and Republicans will come together on.”
Know More
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said this week that his chamber is ready to move on Russia sanctions whenever the White House is. Yet it also might move sooner.
Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said that while Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson have their hands full now with party-line tax and spending legislation, he hoped Congress might start voting after the upcoming Memorial Day recess.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has contended publicly and privately that it still wants to give diplomacy with Putin a chance, describing sanctions as a threat to those efforts. The White House did not provide a comment for this story, but the administration addressed the legislative efforts this week.
“If you start threatening sanctions, the Russians will stop talking,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this week. “And there’s value in us being able to talk to them and drive them to get to the table.”
Rubio added that the US would look at imposing sanctions on Moscow at a later point, in the absence of progress on a peace deal.
During Trump’s first term, the Senate moved its own Russia sanctions bill without an explicit OK from his administration. One of the two senators who opposed that bill told Semafor the latest effort to sanction Putin is the “craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“It would basically place an embargo on the entire world. It has a 500% tariff on anybody who buys or sells oil or gas from Russia. There’s like 60 countries that buy oil and gas from Russia,” said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.
“The fact that 60 people got on it makes me think they can’t read,” Paul added of his fellow senators. “I mean, it’s bizarre. It’s the most outlandish proposal I’ve ever seen.”
But Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., his party’s lead cosponsor of the Graham sanctions bill, said he has consulted with European officials who are supportive and “ready for whatever burden they have to bear.”
Blumenthal also noted that China would feel the biggest impact, “and they well deserve it.”
Evelyn Farkas, the executive director at the McCain Institute and a Pentagon official during the Obama administration, acknowledged she was worried about the proposed sanctions’ impact on the global economy on top of Trump’s existing global tariff regime. But, she added, that risk isn’t an argument against the bill.
Putting pressure on Putin is “the best way to get peace,” Farkas told Semafor. “We need these sanctions.”
The View From Ukraine
Eager to increase penalties on Moscow, Ukrainians want to see the US and Europe more forward with more punishing sanctions. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has tried to make the case to Trump that Putin will remain an obstacle to peace negotiations.
“We are very much looking forward to” the US moving forward with more sanctions,” Maria Mezentseva, a Ukrainian member of parliament from Zelenskyy’s party, told Semafor.
The European Union, UK and US “should be on one page with regards to the aggressor,” she said. “I think the Congress has to make a move.”
Burgess and Morgan’s View
Calls from some Republican senators to move forward on a sanctions package appear, at this stage, to be falling on deaf ears. It’s hard to imagine party leadership in the Senate — let alone the House — moving a package without Trump’s blessing, and the president seems intent on letting talks with Putin play out longer.
As one source who is closely tracking the bill on Capitol Hill told us, the measure is “on life support” without backing from Thune and Trump.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., a member of leadership, said she thought the bill would pass if put up for a vote but predicted “we would wait for a signal from [Trump] or the secretary of state about whether we should move forward.”
Still, it is possible that the signal comes quietly, and Trump can use Senate action to spur movement with Putin.
Room for Disagreement
Some doubt that the US would ever implement a 500% tariff on US imports from countries that buy Russian oil and gas.
“A 500-percent tariff on Russia might [happen], as a face-saving way to walking away from the peace process without looking completely humiliated by Russia,” Dalibor Rohac, a Europe expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told Semafor.
But that tariff would be “completely insignificant given the volume of US-Russia trade,” which is relatively low, he said.
Notable
- Ukraine plans to present new recommendations to the EU next week that call on the bloc to take a more aggressive approach to Russia sanctions, like sanctioning Russian oil buyers, Reuters reported.