Ukraine’s leader welcomed a raft of new economic sanctions against Russia being imposed by the Trump administration and the European Union on Thursday, calling the increased pressure on Moscow “very important.”
CBS News correspondent Ramy Inocencio says the new U.S. sanctions, announced by the Treasury on Wednesday, essentially block Americans from dealing with anyone at the Russian oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil, or with any companies that are more than 50% owned by them.
The sanctions are a win for Zelenskyy. But despite President Trump’s open frustration with Russia’s strongman leader, who has refused to negotiate a truce, American pressure on Moscow has increased only economically so far, not with the provision of long-range additional weapons, or even with overt permission to launch attacks deeper inside Russia.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent encouraged allies to “join in” as he announced the new U.S. sanctions on Wednesday, and the European Union quickly did.
The EU heaped new economic sanctions on Russia Thursday as part of the broadened effort to choke off the revenue that funds Moscow’s three-year invasion of Ukraine and compel President Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end to the war.
“We waited for this. God bless, it will work. And this is very important,” the Ukrainian leader said in Brussels, where EU countries attending a summit announced the bloc’s latest round of sanctions.
Posting earlier on social media as he arrived in Brussels, Zelenskyy thanked Mr. Trump for a “resolute and well-targeted decision,” calling the U.S. sanctions a “clear signal that prolonging the war and spreading terror come at a cost.”
“It is a strong and much-needed message that aggression will not go unanswered,” he said, adding a call later for other nations to join in sanctioning Russia.
Russia dismissive, but ex-president calls sanctions an “act of war”
Russia, however, dismissed the sanctions announced by Ukraine’s Western partners as counterproductive, with the country’s state-run RIA Novosti news agency declaring that they would be “painful, as usual, but not deadly. Also as usual.”
“Pressure or no pressure, it won’t make things any sweeter for Zelenskyy. And what’s more, it won’t bring peace any closer,” Komsomolskaya Pravda, a popular pro-Kremlin tabloid, said.
Former president and current chair of the Russian state Security Council Dmitry Medvedev went further, as the outspoken figure often does, declaring the U.S. sanctions “an act of war.”
“The U.S. is our enemy, and their talkative ‘peacemaker’ has now fully embarked on the warpath with Russia,” Medvedev wrote in a message posted on social media. “The decisions taken are an act of war against Russia. And now Trump has fully aligned himself with loony Europe.”
The measures are a long-sought triumph for Zelenskyy, who has campaigned for the international community to punish Russia more comprehensively for attacking his country.
Despite U.S.-led peace efforts in recent months, the war shows no sign of ending after more than three years of fighting, and European leaders are increasingly concerned about the threat from Russia.
Ukrainian forces have largely held Russia’s bigger army at bay in a slow and ruinous war of attrition along a roughly 600-mile front line that snakes along eastern and southern Ukraine.
Almost daily Russian long-range strikes have taken aim at Ukraine’s power grid ahead of the bitter winter, while Ukrainian forces have targeted Russian oil refineries and manufacturing plants.
Trump frustrated with Putin, but so far offering sanctions, not missiles
Energy revenue is the linchpin of Russia’s economy, allowing Putin to pour money into the armed forces without worsening inflation and avoiding a currency collapse.
The EU measures target Russian oil and gas, the Russian shadow fleet of hundreds of aging tankers that are dodging sanctions, and Russia’s financial sector. A new system for limiting the movement of Russian diplomats within the 27-nation EU will also be introduced.
Zelenskyy urged more nations to punish Russia. “This is a good signal to other countries in the world to join the sanctions,” he told reporters in Brussels.
International crude prices jumped more than $2 per barrel Thursday on news of the additional sanctions.
Senior officials in Europe and the United States have debated for months over how best to crank up pressure on the Kremlin.
As the sanctions were announced in Washington on Wednesday, Mr. Trump denied a Wall Street Journal report that he had eased U.S. restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range weapons to target deeper inside Russia, calling it “fake news.”
“The U.S. has nothing to do with those missiles, wherever they may come from, or what Ukraine does with them!” Mr. Trump said in a post on his own Truth Social platform.
Mr. Trump has also, so far, disappointed Zelenskyy in his long-running bid to secure American-made Tomahawk long-range missiles to use in his country’s defense.
Zelenskyy also reiterated on Thursday that Ukraine would not agree to cede any land occupied by Russia as part of a ceasefire agreement. Mr. Trump said this week that the fighting should be paused with the battle lines frozen where they stand — with Russia’s invading forces in control of about 78% of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, he said.
Zelenskyy has called that a reasonable starting point for negotiations, but on Thursday he was quoted by the Euronews outlet, after he arrived in Belgium, as saying a ceasefire agreement could include “no territorial concessions” to Russia.
The new EU measures took almost a month to decide. The 27-nation bloc has already slapped 18 packages of sanctions against Russia over the war, but getting final agreement on whom and what to target can take weeks. Moscow has also proved adept at sidestepping sanctions.
The U.S. sanctions came after Mr. Trump said that his plan for a swift meeting with Putin was on hold because he didn’t want it to be a “waste of time.” It was the latest twist in Mr. Trump’s hot-and-cold efforts to end the war as Putin refuses to budge from his demands.
President Trump expressed frustration with Putin at the Oval Office again on Wednesday, telling reporters that “every time I speak to Vladimir, I have good conversations and then they don’t go anywhere. They just don’t go anywhere.”
In what appeared to be a public reminder of Russian atomic arsenals, Putin on Wednesday directed drills of the country’s strategic nuclear forces.
With no peace in sight, Ukraine and Russia keep fighting
The two sides continued to pummel each other with strikes overnight.
In a village in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, Russia conducted a so-called double-tap drone strike, hitting the same place a second time when first responders arrived at the scene of the first strike, regional head Oleh Syniehubov said. One emergency worker was killed and five of his colleagues were injured, Syniehubov said.
Russian drones also attacked three districts of Kyiv, injuring eight people, according to city’s prosecutor’s office.
The Russian Defense Ministry, meanwhile, reported intercepting and destroying 139 Ukrainian drones over Russian regions and the annexed Crimean peninsula overnight.
It did not comment on unconfirmed reports that Ukrainian drones hit another oil refinery and an unspecified energy facility.