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US senators have struck a deal with the White House on legislation to pile economic pressure on Russia and countries that buy its oil and gas, in a long-awaited breakthrough intended to turn the screws on Moscow.
In a joint statement on Friday, Republican senators Lindsey Graham and Roger Wicker and Democrats Richard Blumenthal and Jeanne Shaheen said they had reached an agreement with Donald Trump’s administration to move forward with an updated version of their Russian sanctions legislation.
The lawmakers hailed the “significant progress” and expected to “roll out” the legislation “very soon”.
“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, fuelling the [Vladimir] Putin war machine,” they said.
The breakthrough is the latest sign of a shift in stance from the Trump administration on Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. At the Nato summit in Turkey this week the president said he would grant Ukraine a licence to produce Patriot surface-to-air interceptor missiles.
Lockheed Martin’s Pac-3 interceptor missiles used with the Patriot air defence system are crucial to Ukraine’s ability to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles that are wreaking havoc on Kyiv and other cities.
Graham and Blumenthal had for more than a year pushed the president to give the green light to legislation intended to dramatically increase the economic pressure on Russia and buyers of its energy.
The proposals have long had bipartisan support in the US Senate and House of Representatives.
But the administration had until this week appeared reluctant to sign on. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.
Speaking to reporters in Kyiv on Friday, Graham, a close ally of Trump, said he and other senators had been working behind the scenes with the White House to make sure the sanctions legislation would have the president’s buy-in.
He said he was confident that the bill — which would “give tools to President Trump to help end this war” — would soon become law.
Earlier on Friday, Graham met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv. In a statement released after their meeting, Zelenskyy said he was “grateful” to the Republican senator.
“It is important that our long-range sanctions pressure on Russia be reinforced through new sanctions steps by our partners,” he said.
Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia has managed to maintain the flow of crude exports despite the loss of some traditional markets.
According to Kpler, Russian seaborne exports totalled 187mn barrels in June — a monthly record — after a surge in demand triggered by the disruption of oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz.
But with buyers facing pressure from secondary sanctions risks and compliance with the G7’s price cap, Russian crude is sold well below other benchmarks. On Friday Argus Media, a pricing agency, assessed its oil exported through the Baltic to be selling for $46.59 a barrel, compared with $72.64 for Brent.
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