Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova responded to the U.S. Treasury Department’s latest round of sanctions against Russian oil on Thursday by dismissing them as irrelevant, claiming Russia will “not face any particular problems.”
Zakharova condemned the sanctions as “extremely counterproductive,” particularly in the context of President Donald Trump announcing plans for meetings with Putin intended to find an end to the latter’s ongoing invasion of neighboring Ukraine. She nonetheless claimed the country has endured years of sanctions and its economy is properly isolated, such as to not feel the pain of elevated sanctions as much as it once did.
“We consider this step to be extremely counterproductive,” Zakharova told reporters, “But we will not face any particular problems in connection with the abovementioned decision by the [U.S.] Treasury Department.”
“Our country has developed a strong immunity to Western restrictions and will continue to confidently develop its economic and political potential,” she claimed.
The spokeswoman went on to compare the sanctions to actions taken by former American President Joe Biden, warning, “If the current U.S. administration follows the example of its predecessors and tries to force Russia to compromise its national interests through illegal sanctions, the result will be the same: failure from a domestic political point of view and a negative impact on global economic stability.”
The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman nonetheless emphasized that, sanctions aside, Moscow was hoping to continuing conversations with the White House regarding Ukraine, which have so far proven entirely fruitless.
“We see no significant obstacles to continuing the process initiated by the presidents of Russia and the U.S. to agree on the political framework for a settlement in Ukraine and to fill it with concrete results,” Zakharova told reporters, according to the Russian news agency Tass.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on Wednesday that it would expand its sanctions regime on Russia to include sectors of some of Russia’s most lucrative oil companies, Rosneft Oil and Lukoil, under its umbrella. Bessent emphasized that the goal of the sanctions was to produce an “immediate ceasefire” in Ukraine, which has proven lucrative since the full-scale invasion began in 2022 largely as a result of Russia continuing to fund its operations through fossil fuel sales to allies such as China and India.
“Given President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine,” Bessent said in his statement. “Treasury is prepared to take further action if necessary to support President Trump’s effort to end yet another war. We encourage our allies to join us and adhere to these sanctions.”
Trump described the sanctions as “tremendous” in comments separately and urged the Putin regime to limit its violence so that “they won’t be on for long.”
“At the conclusion of the call, we agreed that there will be a meeting of our High Level Advisors, next week. The United States’ initial meetings will be led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, together with various other people, to be designated. A meeting location is to be determined,” Trump wrote.
“President Putin and I will then meet in an agreed upon location, Budapest, Hungary, to see if we can bring this ‘inglorious’ War, between Russia and Ukraine, to an end,” he added.
The sanctions are an abrupt shift from the tone out of the White House last week, following a conversation between Trump and Putin directly. At the time, Trump announced in a statement published to his website Truth Social that he planned to meet with Putin in person in the near future, potentially as soon as a week from the message, following what he described as a productive conversation. The two also agreed to dispatch their top diplomats, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, to hold high-level conversations regarding the Ukraine invasion. This conversation occurred, but the promised meeting between Trump and Putin has reportedly not been planned.
Trump had announced that the meeting would occur in Budapest, Hungary, under the auspices of China-friendly Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Orbán had celebrated the news as confirmation that his country was uniquely positioned to advance world peace. Positive signals also came out of Kyiv, where President Volodymyr Zelensky — who visited the White House on Friday — said he was “ready” to travel to Budapest and meet with Putin himself. Zelensky and Putin have not met in person since 2019, when France and Germany hosted a failed meeting to prevent the expansion of hostilities between Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine.
“If we really want to have just and lasting peace, we need both sides of this tragedy,” Zelensky said in an interview with NBC News last week. “How can there be some deals without us about us?”
Shortly before the news broke that the Budapest summit would not happen any time soon, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski warned in an interview that Poland may potentially intercept Putin’s plane en route to Hungary to arrest him. The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Putin in 2023 on charges of war crimes in Ukraine, particularly the mass abduction of Ukrainian children from their parents. Poland is a signatory to the Rome Statute that created the ICC, so it is obligated by international law to enforce its warrants.
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