The Washington Post
Editorial Board
April 4, 2025
By imposing secondary sanctions on buyers of Russian oil and gas, the U.S. president could push for a ceasefire.
President Donald Trump might finally, belatedly be coming to recognize what most observers have known for more than three years: Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was a brazen attempt to seize territory and topple a sovereign government. President Vladimir Putin wants no peace deal that doesn’t consolidate his illegal land grab.
Putin’s top officials made this much clear in recent days by rejecting White House proposals for a 30-day truce or a limited ceasefire in the Black Sea. Meanwhile, the Russian military continues its attacks on Ukrainian cities and energy infrastructure despite a mutual agreement to halt attacks on each other’s energy targets. A visit to Washington this week by top Putin envoy Kirill Dmitriev — the first by a senior Russian official since the start of the Ukraine war — appeared to focus on future economic cooperation between Washington and Moscow, but it made little progress toward a truce to stop the fighting.
As for the proposed ceasefire, take the word of Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, who told a Russian interviewer, “We take the models and solutions proposed by the Americans very seriously, but we can’t accept it all in its current form.” Moscow, he said, is interested only in an agreement that addresses what Russia considers the “root causes” of the conflict — that is, Ukraine’s desire to join NATO and to exist as an independent country within its internationally recognized borders, free of Russian aggression.
As if to punctuate the Russian president’s lack of interest in a peace deal, Putin this week moved to expand the size of his military, issuing a spring call-up for 160,000 men 30 and younger from April to July — the highest number of conscripts since 2011. The conflict has depleted Russia’s military personnel so much that the Kremlin has been relying on prison inmates and North Korean soldiers.
On Sunday, Trump told NBC News he was “very angry, pissed off” with Putin, for, among other things, questioning Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s legitimacy as president and dragging his feet on agreeing to a limited ceasefire plan. Trump then threatened, “If a deal isn’t made, and if I think it was Russia’s fault, I’m going to put secondary sanctions on Russia.” Secondary sanctions means placing 25 to 50 percent tariffs on countries that continue to purchase Russian oil, natural gas, uranium and other resources in defiance of U.S. sanctions.
Republicans in the Senate, who generally have followed Trump’s lead on Russia and Ukraine, also seem to be finding some backbone. A rare bipartisan group of 50 senators, led by Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), has backed a bill that
would impose tariffs of 500 percent on goods from countries still buying Russian products if Russia refuses to negotiate with Ukraine in good faith or violates a ceasefire.
It’s not clear, of course, whether Trump’s recently voiced frustration amounts to a true about-face. He began his term praising Putin as the only combatant interested in peace and berated Zelensky as a dictator, the instigator of the conflict and the main obstacle to peace. Ideally, Putin’s latest obduracy has truly convinced Trump that he’s had things backward.
If he were to impose secondary sanctions, Trump could pressure Putin to be more agreeable about a ceasefire. Last month, Trump imposed a tariff of 25 percent on all goods imported into the United States from countries purchasing Venezuelan oil, directly or indirectly. Similar sanctions on buyers of Russia’s commodities could cripple Putin’s main economic lifeline.
But secondary sanctions would also require the Trump administration to make some tough choices. China is the main buyer of Russian oil, and Trump is already imposing tariffs on Beijing. But Russia’s other big customers include India and Turkey. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan are both autocrats operating in democratic systems and more popular with Trump. (Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs added new levies on India of 27 percent, and 34 percent on China, but Russia, already heavily sanctioned, was left off the list.) Also, within the European Union, Hungary, led by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, another illiberal leader and Trump acolyte, buys a lot of Russian oil and natural gas.
It’s useful to keep in mind the stakes for the United States in the Ukraine war — that is, its concern for the inviolability of internationally recognized borders, the idea that a country’s territory should not be seized by force, and America’s own credibility and that of its Western allies. In this conflict, there is just one aggressor, Russia, and one victim, Ukraine, and the United States should be firmly on Ukraine’s side. If Trump is coming around to realizing this, and if he is now willing to tighten the economic screws on Russia, well, it’s better late than never.