Russia reacted with outrage Thursday after the United States imposed substantial sanctions on its two largest oil companies, the first economic punishments slapped on Moscow by President Donald Trump during his second term.
Experts said it remains to be seen, however, the extent to which this move may damage the Russian economy or Vladimir Putin’s war machine, as Trump hopes to pressure Moscow to halt its assault on Ukraine.
Days after canceling a planned summit with Putin, citing a lack of progress in the negotiations, Trump took the major step by effectively blacklisting Rosneft and Lukoil.
The announcement was welcomed by Kyiv and its European allies, which added their own new raft of sanctions on Moscow, earning the ire of Russian officials and the state-controlled media.
Speaking to journalists at the Kremlin on Thursday, Putin called the sanctions an "unfriendly act" but quickly brushed off their likely impact. "They are serious in nature and will have certain consequences, but they will not have a significant impact on the health of our economy," he said.
Putin added that sanctions on Russian oil could lead to "a sharp increase" in gas prices across the world, adding: "If you take into account the domestic political calendar in the United States, it is clear how sensitive some processes would be. Those advising the current administration to adopt such measures should ask themselves whom they are really serving."
The Russian leader said that he understood the U.S. wished to "cancel or postpone" the planned Budapest summit, adding that "for both me and the U.S. president, it would be a mistake to approach this lightly and then walk away without the expected result."
Hawkish ex-President Dmitry Medvedev, who now serves as the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, was more forthright in his criticism of the Trump administration. “The USA is our adversary, and their loquacious ‘peacemaker’” — meaning Trump — “has now fully taken up the path of war with Russia,” Medvedev wrote in a social media post.
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova added in a news briefing: “If the current U.S. administration decides to follow the example of its predecessors, who tried to pressure or force Russia to abandon its national interests through illegitimate sanctions, the outcome will be exactly the same: a failure, both politically at home and harmful to global economic stability.”
The sanctions have been received in Russia as another flip-flop by Trump, who has tried to strong-arm both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at different times during his second term.
“The U.S. president has changed his tune once again,” wrote Komsomolskaya Pravda, Putin’s favorite newspaper. Another paper, Moskovskij Komsomolets, likened the U.S. president to a “Kolobok,” a scheming bread bun from Slavic folklore.
Trump has often expressed verbal frustration with Putin, accusing him of making positive diplomatic noises before bombing Ukrainian civilians again, but until now had avoided taking direct action.
This week, he said that meeting with Putin would be a "waste of time," after Russia rejected the American demand that a ceasefire come before talks.
“We canceled the meeting with President Putin; it just didn’t feel right to me,” Trump said at a White House gathering of reporters. “It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I canceled it, but we’ll do it in the future.”
The sanctions drew praise from Ukraine and its supporters.
“We waited for this. God bless, it will work. And this is very important,” Zelenskyy said in Brussels.
This is far from the first time that Russia has been punished like this. Under the administration of President Joe Biden, the U.S., along with the European Union and others, tried to squeeze Russia’s banking and energy sectors, attempting to isolate it from the global market.
This did cause Russia some pain, with its oil and gas revenues declining after the initial measure introduced in 2022. However, it has been able to avoid the worst of it, with its 3.6% economic growth in 2024 outpacing even the U.S.’ 2.8%. It did this by increasing sales to China and India, and using its so-called “shadow fleet” of vessels to carry exports in off-book moves.
These ships were the target of new E.U. sanctions announced Thursday, which also sought to hit Russian energy and the ability of its diplomats to move freely in Europe.
Zakharova, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, was bullish about Russia’s ability to weather these moves, as it has done before.
The measures “will not cause any particular difficulties,” she said. “Our country has developed a strong immunity to Western restrictions and will continue to steadily strengthen its economic and energy potential.”
Western analysts said the picture was more nuanced.
"Russia is extremely skilled at avoiding the consequences of Western sanctions," Brett Bruen, the director of global engagement in the Obama White House and a career American diplomat, told NBC News.
“This is clearly a new threshold,” said Fabrice Pothier, NATO’s former director of policy planning who is now the CEO of Rasmussen Global, a consultancy based in Copenhagen, Denmark. But “the Russian economy has shown its capacity to adapt and reposture itself, especially with Asian economies, starting with China and India.”
So that “doesn’t mean it’s a game changer,” he said of the new sanctions, “but it means it’s just putting more cost on Putin’s actions. Whether the cost is going to be high enough for him to change, I doubt it. It will probably take more.”
Peter Harrell, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who served in the Biden administration, called the U.S. sanctions a “heartening move.” Eddie Fishman, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, agreed in that “this is a big step.”
However, he and others said that success of the sanctions would depend on two things: How strictly the U.S. is willing and able to enforce them; and whether it decides to take any actions on other countries buying Russian energy, namely the two Asian giants propping up Moscow so far.
“This won’t seriously deprive Putin of his war dollars unless we sanction the eight refineries that buy the oil in China, India,” said Bill Browder, an American-born investment fund manager and key Putin critic.
“Trump does not feel beholden in the same way that Biden was not touching third rails," said Bruen — using the "third rail" metaphor to describe Trump's willingness to grapple with previously "untouchable" foreign policy issues.
"And so if he is willing to use secondary sanctions, with more aggressive steps such as expanding the radius of where Ukraine can use Western weapons, all of that will mount pressure on Putin.”
Separately, two Russian aircraft flying from Kaliningrad violated Lithuanian airspace near Kybartai on Thursday, two Lithuanian officials told NBC News.
A Russian SU-30 fighter aircraft and an IL-78 refueling aircraft flew into Lithuanian territory at about 700 meters and fled after having been in Lithuanian airspace for about 18 seconds, they said.
Two Spanish fighters called Eurofighter Typhoons were dispatched as part of the NATO air police mission and flew to the site of the violation.
The officials said the NATO air mission worked, and both praised their efforts. They also said Lithuanian government leaders are discussing a possible response.
The Lithuanian Foreign Affairs Ministry summoned the Russian charge d’affaires to protest the airspace violation. There was no immediate reaction from the Russian Defense Ministry.
Several European countries have in recent months accused Russia of violating their airspace with jets and drones as part of a broader effort to test NATO’s military response measures. The Russian Defense Ministry has denied illegally violating European airspace.
