Trump’s Patience With Putin Leaves Senate Sanctions Push on Hold

A police officer collects drone missile parts from a residential area following a Russian overnight attack in Kyiv on June 6. Photo by Andrew Kravchenko /Photographer: Andrew Kravchenko/

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(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump’s suggestion that he may let Russia and Ukraine keep fighting has left US lawmakers in an awkward spot over their plan to force a ceasefire with “bone-crushing” sanctions against Moscow.

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The Senate bill has more than 80 co-sponsors, an all-but-unheard-of level of bipartisan support. Yet although that kind of veto-proof backing is enough for the Senate to press ahead without White House backing, supporters show no sign they’re ready to challenge the president.

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Trump’s comments on Thursday — he said he hadn’t even looked at the bill, but will do what he wants “at the right time” — put the brakes on what had seemed to be an accelerating push to advance the proposal as soon as this month. 

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Republican co-author Lindsey Graham, who said earlier in the week that he aimed to have the Senate plan in place by the Group of Seven leaders’ summit to be held in Kananaskis, Alberta, June 15-17, seemed to ease off the gas in a tweet after Trump’s comments. “I have coordinated closely with the White House on this endeavor from day one,” he wrote. 

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Trump, however, has shown little interest in backing Graham’s plan, and the White House has insisted that any decision on sanctions will be the president’s alone. Instead, he’s signaled he may walk away from efforts to force a settlement amid growing frustration with his inability to deliver the quick peace deal he promised on the campaign trail.

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Graham’s Democrat co-author Richard Blumenthal said the pair are still working on changes to the bill to make it more acceptable to the White House.

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European leaders, meanwhile, are pushing ahead with plans to impose more restrictions on Russian financial institutions and the shadow fleet of tankers Moscow uses to export its oil. Those limits have squeezed Russia’s economy — but not President Vladimir Putin’s resolve to continue fighting. Russia’s war in Ukraine, conceived as a days- or weeks-long “special military operation,” is well into its fourth year. 

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German Chancellor Friedrich Merz made the case for turning up the heat on Putin during an Oval Office meeting with Trump on Thursday, but came away sounding cautious.

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“I asked the president to go along with us to put more pressure on this government, on Putin, to come to an end with this terrible war,” Merz told Fox News. “I was a little bit more optimistic a couple of weeks ago, when the first diplomatic initiatives were more or less successful.”

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Since then, talks have moved slowly amid a yawning gulf between Russian and Ukrainian demands, and fighting has raged. 

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A daring Ukrainian strike on June 1, using drones smuggled into Russia to hit its strategic bombers at bases thousands of miles from the front lines, provided a stunning show of Kyiv’s capabilities.

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While some in the US administration were privately impressed with the attack, there were also signs of unhappiness that it would only harden Putin’s resolve to fight on, according to allied officials who asked not to be identified discussing matters that aren’t public.

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Trump said he’d asked Putin not to retaliate. But the Russian leader rejected that appeal, and mounted deadly new missile and drone strikes on Kyiv and other cities Friday.