WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump’s flip-flopping response to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine flipped yet again Wednesday, with an announcement of new economic sanctions against Russia’s two biggest oil companies.
“Today is a very big day in terms of what we’re doing,” Trump told reporters at the start of an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte. “Look, these are tremendous sanctions. These are very big. They are against their two big oil companies.”
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Wednesday’s developments come just five days after Trump called for an end to the war in Ukraine, with the existing battle lines becoming the new territorial lines — which would effectively reward Putin for starting a brutal war of aggression. And that statement came just two weeks after Trump proposed letting Ukraine use U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missiles against Russia. He nixed that idea last week.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he would accept a ceasefire along current battle lines if they are the starting point for negotiating a permanent peace agreement. Putin has insisted that Russia should get territory it has been unable to seize despite 44 months of trying.
Immediately following a phone call with Putin on Oct. 16, Trump said the two would meet in Budapest, Hungary, in about two weeks, but on Wednesday, he said he had canceled that plan.
“It just ― it didn’t feel right to me. It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I canceled it, but we’ll do it in the future,” he said.
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It’s unclear what the new sanctions on Russia can accomplish that previous rounds of sanctions have not. Former President Joe Biden, who pulled together NATO members into a united front to help Ukraine after the 2022 invasion, imposed several rounds of sanctions along with the G7 nations, including on oil imports.
“They’re massive sanctions, sanctions on oil, the two biggest oil companies, among the biggest in the world,” Trump boasted Wednesday.
The new sanctions are on the Russian companies Rosneft and Lukoil and dozens of their subsidiaries, and make it illegal for them to have assets in the United States.
“Given President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.
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In his remarks, Trump again appeared to blame both Putin and Zelenskyy equally for the war, even though it was Russia that began a full-scale invasion of its neighbor in 2022. Since that time, Russian soldiers have committed atrocities, including rape and murder of civilians, and Putin has ordered near-daily drone and missile attacks on Ukrainian residential areas.
Ukraine’s counterstrikes into Russia, in contrast, have been against military targets and oil production facilities.
“Hopefully, Zelensky will be reasonable, too. You know, it takes two to tango, as they say,” Trump said before repeating his previously expressed bewilderment that wartime adversaries Zelenskyy and Putin cannot “get along.”
“These two people hate each other,” he said. “This should be easier, but the level of hatred between Zelensky and Putin is very substantial.”
