WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration announced Wednesday new “massive sanctions” against Russia’s oil industry that are aimed at moving Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table and bringing an end to Moscow’s brutal war on Ukraine.
The sanctions against oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil followed months of calls from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as well as bipartisan pressure on Trump to hit Russia with harder sanctions on its oil industry, the economic engine that has allowed Russia to continue to execute the grinding conflict even as it finds itself largely internationally isolated.
“Hopefully he’ll become reasonable,” Trump said of Putin not long after the Treasury Department announced the sanctions against Russia’s two biggest oil companies and their subsidiaries. “And hopefully Zelenskyy will be reasonable, too. You know, it takes two to tango, as they say.”
The U.S. administration announced the sanctions as NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was in Washington for talks with Trump. The military alliance has been coordinating deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, many of them purchased from the United States by Canada and European countries.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the new sanctions were a direct response to Moscow’s refusal to end its “senseless war” and an attempt to choke off “the Kremlin’s war machine.”
Bessent added that the Treasury Department was prepared to take further action if necessary to support Trump’s effort to end the war. “We encourage our allies to join us in and adhere to these sanctions.”
The announcement came after Russian drones and missiles blasted sites across Ukraine, killing at least six people, including a woman and her two young daughters.
The attack came in waves from Tuesday night into Wednesday and targeted at least eight Ukrainian cities, as well as a village in the region of the capital, Kyiv, where a strike set fire to a house in which the mother and her 6-month-old and 12-year-old daughters were staying, regional head Mykola Kalashnyk said.
At least 29 people, including five children, were wounded in Kyiv, which appeared to be the main target, authorities said.
Russian drones also hit a kindergarten in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, later Wednesday when children were in the building, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. One person was killed and six were hurt, but no children were physically harmed, he said.
Rutte, in his Oval Office appearance, went out of his way to underscore that the weaponry the U.S. is selling Europe to provide to Ukraine has been essential to helping stop many attacks like the one that ravaged the kindergarten.
“We need to make sure that the air defense systems are in place, and we need the U.S. systems to do that, and the Europeans are paying for that,” Rutte said. “It is exactly the type of actions we needed, and the President is doing that and trying everything to get this work done.”
Zelenskyy said many of the children were in shock. He said the attack targeted 10 separate regions: Kyiv, Odesa, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kirovohrad, Poltava, Vinnytsia, Zaporizhzhia, Cherkasy and Sumy.
Peace efforts stall
Trump’s efforts to end the war that started with Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbor more than three years ago have failed to gain traction. Trump has repeatedly expressed frustration with Putin’s refusal to budge from his conditions for a settlement after Ukraine offered a ceasefire and direct peace talks.
Trump said Tuesday that his plan for a swift meeting with Putin was on hold because he didn’t want it to be a “waste of time.” European leaders accused Putin of stalling.
Meanwhile, in what appeared to be a public reminder of Russian atomic arsenals, Putin on Wednesday directed drills of the country’s strategic nuclear forces.
Zelenskyy urged the European Union, the United States and the Group of Seven industrialized nations to force Russia to the negotiating table. Pressure can be applied on Moscow “only through sanctions, long-range (missile) capabilities and coordinated diplomacy among all our partners,” he said.
