(NEW YORK) — For the first time in his presidency, Donald Trump this week imposed new sanctions on Russia in an attempt to push Vladimir Putin to stop his nearly four-year war in Ukraine.

The sanctions target two of Russia’s largest oil companies and their subsidiaries, a move that analysts say is a significant blow to Putin but unlikely to immediately shift his military aims.

“These are tremendous sanctions. These are very big,” Trump said as he confirmed the levies in an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte on Wednesday.

When asked why he was taking this action now, after months of threats and delayed punitive action against Moscow, Trump said he “felt it was time.”

Trump’s U-turns on Russia-Ukraine diplomacy

The surprise sanctions announcement came after a dizzying week of diplomacy for Trump, who turned his focus back to the conflict in Eastern Europe after securing a fragile ceasefire agreement in the Middle East.

Trump has shifted between support for Russia and support for Ukraine since returning to office, and has often sent mixed messages on what concessions would need to be made by both sides to reach a peace deal.

“I don’t think there’s an overall strategy. I think there’s an overall goal, which has been pretty consistent, which is to stop the fighting and stop the killing,” said William Taylor, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine under President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama who also served as chargé d’affaires to the country during the first Trump administration.

Trump is now calling for a freeze of the conflict along the current battle lines, a ceasefire proposal that is backed by Ukraine.

One clear trend in Trump’s approach to the war over the past several months, experts said, was a growing frustration with Russia.

“Trump’s rhetoric started to change in the summer when he realized that despite his effort to diplomatically engage with Russia, Putin was not really delivering anything other than smooth talking. Russia, in fact, continued to escalate its attacks on Ukraine,” said Maria Snegovaya, a senior fellow with the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Amid those tensions, Trump recently said he was considering giving Ukraine access to coveted American-made Tomahawk missiles that would allow Kyiv to strike deeper inside Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited Washington to make the case for the military assets last week.

One day before Zelenskyy’s arrival, though, Trump changed his bullish posture after a phone call with Putin. Trump then said he and Putin planned to meet for a second face-to-face meeting.

“Putin has been very skillful in derailing Trump’s intentions to get tough with him. Putin derailed the sanctions when he went to Alaska and he derailed the Tomahawks with a phone call. But it does appear that Trump has figured that out,” said Taylor.

The second Putin summit was called off days after Trump first announced it, as Russia made clear it had no intention to change its goals to erode a sovereign Ukraine. Trump said he canceled the meeting because he didn’t want to have his time “wasted.”

“It seems that was a final blow,” said Snegovaya. “And eventually the administration decided it’s not enough to just use carrots to pressure Putin, you also need sticks. I think [the sanctions are] really long overdue decision but it’s better later than never, and the hope is that it’s just a first step in the overall much needed direction.”

What impact will the sanctions have?

The sanctions hit Open Joint Stock Company Rosneft Oil Company and Lukoil OAO, which are estimated to account for nearly half of all Russian oil production.

The Kremlin waved off the measures, and Putin said they will not “significantly affect our economies.”

Severe sanctions were put in place by the Biden administration and European countries after the start of Russia’s war in 2022, but Russia was largely able to stem the impact on its economy through shadow fleets and other adjustments.

But the economic situation in Russia has worsened in recent months, with declines in oil and fuel export revenues, persistent inflation and lower growth rates.

“These sanctions would be bad news for Putin under any circumstances but at the present moment, they’re more significant than they might otherwise seem,” said Stephen Sestanovich, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for the former Soviet Union.

“The past few years they’ve had pretty good economic growth, and so they might not have had this kind of impact then,” Sestanovich said of the new U.S. sanctions. “But right now, this is just one more headache Putin does not need.”
 

How much these new sanctions hamper Russia will largely dependent on U.S. enforcement, experts said, especially when it comes to secondary sanctions on countries and companies buying Russian oil.

A fuller picture of the effect of the sanctions will emerge when they go into effect on Nov. 21.

“The devil, as usual, is in details,” said Snegovaya.

What next?

Analysts agree that the sanctions are not a silver bullet, and should be paired with more military support and financial support for Ukraine.

“There’s more that’s needed,” said Taylor, the former ambassador to Ukraine. “More sanctions, more weapons and more consistency.”

The European Union joined the U.S. in enacting tougher sanctions on Russia on Thursday, marking the group’s 19th sanctions package against Moscow. On Friday, the United Kingdom called on European allies to send more long-range missiles to Ukraine during a gathering with Zelenskyy in London.

Zelenskyy, for his part, left Washington last week without Tomahawk missiles but said he believed the issue was not entirely off the table.

In the meantime, Russia’s only ramped up its attacks on Ukraine, including an aerial strike on a kindergarten in the eastern city of Kharkiv.

“I think everybody ought to be ready for the Russians to get significantly more brutal in their attacks on Ukraine,” said Sestanovich.

“You have to have a comprehensive approach to dealing with this problem and to make the Russians see that actually, the situation is only going to get worse for them,” Sestanovich said. “The Putin approach has been a patient one and maybe a somewhat self-deluded one, thinking that the moment will come where they can break the Ukrainian lines or Ukrainian morale will sag or Western unity will erode. What you’ve got to do is have a set of policies that make it hard for Putin to kid himself.”

Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.