A bipartisan group of senators said Friday they reached an agreement with President Donald Trump’s administration to move forward a new version of legislation to sanction buyers of Russian oil, potentially advancing a long-stalled effort to ramp up pressure on Moscow.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters in Kyiv, where he’s visiting, that the lawmakers have been working closely with the administration on a version of the legislation that would be “acceptable” to the White House and that was “written in a way they could support.”
Neither he nor his colleagues in the effort — Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) — provided details on the legislative text.
The White House has resisted full support of legislation to limit the flow of funds to Moscow’s war chest through sanctions on countries purchasing Russian oil, in addition to Russian officials and entities. Instead, the administration has pushed for the bill to give Trump more latitude to pursue negotiations with Moscow to end the war on Ukraine.
But now might be the lawmakers’ moment to clinch White House backing. Trump has appeared to shift his stance on the more than four-year-long war of late, telling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the NATO summit this week that he would grant Kyiv licenses to produce Patriot interceptor missiles for Ukraine’s defense against Russian ballistic missiles.
“As Russia intensifies its slaughter of civilians, it is imperative that the legislative and executive branches work together to create tools to exact a heavy price on those who buy Russian oil and natural gas, fueling the Putin war machine,” Graham, Shaheen, Blumenthal and Wicker said in a joint statement Friday.
The lawmakers added that they expected to roll out the updated legislation “very soon,” but didn’t give a timeline.
The Graham-led effort to curtail cash flow to Russia’s war machine has appeared to advance multiple times — only to fizzle out. In January, Graham even said he’d gotten the green light from the White House on the legislation, which has more than 80 Senate cosponsors, but that didn’t pan out either.
It’s unclear whether this time is different. Trump has yet to address the latest bid to move the legislation forward, and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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