It has been a tumultuous few months for relations between the United States and Russia. Last October, President Donald J. Trump, clearly frustrated by his inability to end Russia's aggression against Ukraine, a war he had vowed as a presidential candidate on more than 50 occasions to end within 24 hours, did something that even his predecessor had declined to do.
Trump announced that he was sanctioning Russia's two largest oil companies — Rosneft and Lukoil, which together account for oil exports of over 3 million barrels of oil per day, or roughly half of Russia's oil. Combined with the sanctions that former President Joe Biden imposed on Russia's Gazpromneft and Surgutneftegaz, the U.S. has now blacklisted Russia's four largest crude oil producers. Together, they account for between 30% and 50% of Moscow's total budget revenues. The new sanctions' goal, said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, is to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table to end his aggression against neighboring Ukraine by targeting entities that are the major funders of what he called the Kremlin's "war machine."
The sanctions — the first on Russia since Trump's return to the White House — were welcomed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has had a testy relationship with Trump. "We waited for this. God bless, it will work," he said in Brussels, where the European Union joined the U.S. in announcing another round of expanded sanctions against Moscow.
Foreign policy analysts who have urged Trump to be tougher on Putin also praised his move. "President Trump's action, though long overdue, will go a long way toward convincing Putin that he cannot continue to wage his war of aggression against Ukraine without bankrupting his own country," said John E. Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine now at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, in an interview.
While there is little doubt that the new sanctions against Russia's main energy companies, nearly three dozen of their subsidiaries, and those who do business with them are likely to inflict severe economic pressure on the Kremlin, analysts disagree about whether they will be sufficient, on their own, to force Putin to end his brutal war against a country he considers part of his own. Many doubt that economic pressure alone will suffice, as Putin himself has asserted.
Speaking to reporters in Moscow after the European Union announced its own sanctions, Putin called Trump's action an "unfriendly act" that could backfire by raising the global price of oil. While he acknowledged that the sanctions he called "serious" would negatively affect Russia's economy, he claimed that their impact would not be "significant" and would not affect his policies.
In an editorial soon after the announcement, analysts from the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations noted that while economic pressure had "inflicted some pain" on Russia's economy, sanctions had not caused "widespread economic collapse or halted Russia's aggression against Ukraine." In fact, the editorial stated, the International Monetary Fund estimated Russia's gross domestic product had increased by 3.6% in 2024 — a higher growth rate than that of the U.S. and many other Western countries, largely due to massive war spending.
Prior to its most recent invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia had prepared for war by building up more than $640 billion in central bank reserves, only half of which are now subject to Western sanctions. The reserves have served as a financial cushion to stabilize its currency, along with its increased interest rates and its demand that Russian trading partners conduct transactions in Russia's currency, the ruble.
Much depends on whether China and India, which, according to estimates from the Finnish-based Centre for Research and Energy and Clean Air, now buy more than 80% of Russia's crude exports, will continue to do so. Few China analysts think that Beijing, which imports 2 million barrels of Russian oil per day, will curtail its purchases given its geopolitical partnership with Moscow. Until now, India, whose imports of Russian crude oil have soared from some 50,000 barrels per day in 2020 to nearly 1.8 million barrels per day in the first half of 2025, has also resisted Trump administration pressure to stop buying Russian oil, partly because it wants Moscow to remain neutral if tensions with China escalate yet again.
That could change if Trump is serious about imposing secondary sanctions; that is, blacklisting those that do business with Russia's oil companies or facilitate the sale of Russian oil. But Trump's swings between accommodation and anger toward Putin have frustrated Ukraine and its European allies.
Sanctions skeptics argue that the Russian economy has proven remarkably resilient despite Western efforts to diminish Putin's determination to make Russia great again. Putin has proven skillful at devising workarounds, such as building a "shadow fleet" of oil transport tankers with opaque owners and using other intermediaries to continue exporting oil, particularly to Asian markets. Moscow is also said to have offered preferred oil customers like China steep discounts to ensure continued sales. Putin has also shown his willingness to absorb economic pain — as well as extraordinarily high casualties and battlefield losses for incremental territorial gains — to achieve his political aims. He has repeatedly stressed his determination to prevent NATO from expanding along Russia's border and ensure that Ukraine becomes beholden to Moscow once again.
Yet even Putin may have a political and economic breaking point, other analysts argue. American oil production is at an all-time high, while Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries are also pumping more oil than their OPEC quotas, making it less likely that a shortage of oil will severely spike oil prices. Russia's oil sector, moreover, is under intense pressure. Its fields are old and require extensive investment to continue pumping at high volumes. Plus, Kyiv, in response to Russia's strikes on Ukraine's infrastructure and civilian targets, has been using its own missiles and drones against Russian oil targets. Citing what he called Western intelligence sources, Zelenskyy asserted in October that Ukraine's long-range strikes had reduced Russian oil refining capacity by 20%.
Robert Hormats, a former state undersecretary in the Obama administration who had urged Trump to impose tough sanctions on Russia and provide Ukraine with more sophisticated weapons, argues that Washington has long overestimated the strength of Russia's economy. In an article for the Atlantic Council published only weeks before Trump's new oil sanctions, he noted that Russian inflation was already five times greater than that of the U.S. or most Western countries. More than 1,000 multinational companies have already left Russia, along with 14 million jobs. More than 2 million highly skilled technology workers have also left the country. Foreign investment has plunged from over $100 billion a year to almost zero. "The Russians excel at feigning invincibility," said Hormats in an interview. "But the Russian economy is reeling and is far more susceptible to economic pressure than they acknowledge."
Much depends, he added, on whether Trump was not only willing to provide Ukraine with the weapons it needs to defend itself, but also on his willingness to enforce the new sanctions aggressively. The earlier sanctions Biden imposed were "not being adequately enforced," he complained.
Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasia Group, says that while he still thinks sanctions alone are unlikely to end the war, they may succeed in driving Putin to the negotiating table. "Sanctions alone may not be enough just yet," he explained. "But they move the needle."