AP: US senators urge Trump to step up pressure on Russia through sanctions

The Associated Press has reported that almost a month after US President Donald Trump signed into law the Graham Act authorising sweeping sanctions against Russia, the bipartisan Senate leadership is calling on the administration to move faster to restrict the flow of financial resources fuelling the war against Ukraine.

Source: Associated Press

Details: In a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the senators said the most urgent priority for the US should be targeting the shadow fleet of tankers that Moscow uses to transport oil and circumvent US sanctions. They also insisted that the development of Russia's emerging satellite system be halted, which Ukraine has warned could prove devastating because of real-time bombardments this winter.

"Every day that passes without maximum economic pressure allows Moscow to sustain this military escalation," wrote Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Republican Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The senators noted that most of the provisions of the law take effect on 18 October, after the administration's 30-day review period ends. Trump's administration has largely been silent since the bill was passed.

Over the past month, the momentum appears to have stalled, with no public steps by the administration to implement the law.

With bipartisan support, Shaheen and Wicker called on the administration in a letter sent late on 6 October to take a series of specific steps to implement the sanctions regime. Many of these measures align with objectives Ukraine has been pushing for.

The senators, who played a key role in passing the bill, said the US should focus first and foremost on several hundred illicit tankers that can "transport Russian oil with impunity and thereby provide the Kremlin a financial lifeline".

They also stressed that it is crucial that "the administration paralyse the global financial networks that allow Russia to evade our sanctions".

They further said that the Kremlin continues to "move billions of dollars through networks that shield it from scrutiny". They called on the administration to focus, in particular, on overseas branches of banks, including in Shanghai, and "a growing network of Kyrgyz financial institutions", which they said serve as clearing houses for sanctioned capital.

"Foreign banks must be forced to make a choice," the senators wrote. "They can either do business with the United States or finance Russia's war. They cannot do both."

The senators said the Trump administration should act against Russia's "weaponisation of space", citing its development of a new low-Earth-orbit satellite system. Ukraine has warned that the technology could become a major threat this winter as Russia readies further attacks.

They also noted that the sanctions law prohibits any new US investment in Russia and transactions involving sovereign debt. They stressed that the US Department of the Treasury must "issue clear regulatory guidance ahead of the October deadline to ensure American financial institutions completely sever these capital pipelines".

The senators also stated that the US must stop the flow of dual-use technologies and electronics used by Russia to conduct combat operations on the line of contact and use existing sanctions tools to "penalise entities feeding Russia's military-industrial complex".

Background:

• On 18 September, Trump signed the Russia sanctions bill, which was co-authored by the late Senator Lindsey Graham.
• On 16 September, the US House of Representatives passed the Russia sanctions bill on the introduction of tariffs on countries that buy Russian energy. The bill was passed by the US Senate on 7 August.
• On 22 September, Trump said that, if necessary, he was ready to implement the Graham Act on sanctions against Russia.
• A bipartisan group of members of the US House of Representatives, responding to reports of a new strategy towards Russia, urged Trump not to ease sanctions against Russia but instead to use the Graham Act.

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