US Senate passes Russia sanctions bill
WASHINGTON—The US Senate on Friday passed a sweeping sanctions package targeting Russia’s energy revenues.
The legislation now heads to the House of Representatives, though a vote there will not take place until at least early September due to the congressional summer recess.
“This could finally bring Russia to the negotiating table and end this conflict” between Russia and Ukraine, said Republican Jim Risch, chair of the Senate foreign relations committee.
Shadow fleet, too
“It will make a decisive impact that goes beyond what can be achieved on the battlefield. It will cut off the flow of cash that powers Putin’s war machine,” he added in a speech on the Senate floor before the vote.
The bill aims to target the Russian energy sector by imposing tariffs of up to 500 percent on imports from Russia, including gas and oil.
It also includes 100-percent tariffs on the five main importing countries of Russian gas and oil, including China and India.
New sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin and other high-ranking officials are also to be imposed.
For the first time, the United States is also targeting Russia’s shadow fleet, a clandestine network of ships used by Moscow to circumvent Western embargoes since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
The bill was named in honor of Lindsey Graham, the Republican senator who died on July 11 and who had strongly advocated for new sanctions against Moscow because of its invasion of Ukraine.
The day before his death, Graham, along with other Republican and Democratic senators, announced that they had secured the White House’s approval to pass these new sanctions on Russian hydrocarbons, measures that had previously been blocked by President Donald Trump. His sister, Darline Graham, who succeeded him in the Senate, said the bill “hits Putin where it hurts.”
