As part of the continued efforts to end the Ukraine war, the Trump administration drew up a fresh set of sanctions ready to hit key sectors of Russia’s economy to maintain pressure on President Vladimir Putin, a US official familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The impending move signals Washington’s readiness to tighten the screws further, even after President Trump imposed new sanctions on key Russian oil companies earlier this week.
While it is not clear whether Washington will actually carry out any of those moves in the immediate term, it indicates that the administration has a well-developed toolkit to escalate further after Trump imposed sanctions on Russia on Wednesday for the first time since returning to office in January.
Sources said the administration’s sanctions toolkit targets Russia’s banking sector and oil infrastructure, areas viewed as central to Moscow’s war financing.
The measures, if triggered, would mark a sharp escalation in economic pressure, following Wednesday’s sanctions on major oil firms Lukoil and Rosneft, which sent global oil prices soaring by more than $2 and prompted major buyers in China and India to seek alternatives.
One senior official told Reuters that Washington would prefer European allies to take the next significant move, whether through new sanctions or tariffs, but added that Trump may pause briefly to gauge Moscow’s response to the latest measures.
At the same time, US officials have also told European counterparts that they support the EU using frozen Russian assets to buy US weapons for Kyiv, and Washington has held nascent internal conversations about leveraging Russian assets held in the US to support Ukraine’s war effort, two US officials said.
Trump has positioned himself as a global peacemaker, but has admitted that trying to end Russia’s more-than-three-year war in neighbouring Ukraine has proven harder than he had anticipated.
Last week, Ukrainian officials pitched the US with new sanctions activity, said one source with knowledge of those conversations. Among the specific ideas put forward were measures to cut off all Russian banks from the US dollar-based system, two sources said.
