Senate to move forward on Russia sanctions bill, Sen. Lindsey Graham says

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) announced Monday that the Senate will soon move forward with legislation that would sanction Russia’s trading partners after President Trump appeared to give the move his blessing.

“I hear they’re doing that, and that’s OK with me,” Trump told reporters Sunday night before flying back to Washington after a weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida. “As you know, I suggested it. So any country that does business with Russia will be very severely sanctioned. We may add Iran to that formula.”

Monday morning, Graham posted on X: “I am very pleased that with President Trump’s blessing, Congress will be moving on the overwhelmingly bipartisan Russia sanctions bill that will provide President Trump with more tools to end the bloodbath in Ukraine.”

“This legislation is designed to give President Trump more flexibility and power to push Putin to the peace table by going after both Putin and countries like Iran that support him,” Graham added. “I appreciate the strong bipartisan support for this legislation in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.”

The bill, co-authored by Graham and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), had been shelved for months as Trump repeatedly sought to bring about an end to the 33-month-old conflict with diplomacy, including a face-to-face meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska this past Aug. 15.

The bill would impose a 500% tariff on countries that import energy from Russia, the proceeds of which are a key source of funding for the Kremlin’s military machine. The White House had raised concerns that the bill intrudes on the president’s power over foreign policy, contributing to the measure being shelved.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters last month that he hoped to schedule a vote on the measure sometime soon, calling it “a bill whose time has come.”

Days later, the Treasury Department slapped sanctions on two of Moscow’s largest energy firms, Rosneft and Lukoil.

While announcing the sanctions, Trump told reporters that stopping the fighting between Russia and Ukraine has “turned out to be tougher than the Middle East.”

“The Middle East was supposed to be the tough one, and we’ve solved that puzzle,” he said, “but this one will get solved also.”

China and India remain the largest purchasers of Russian oil, though the European Union was still taking in roughly 6% of Moscow’s crude oil exports as of June, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

France, Belgium and Spain accounted for around 85% of all Russian liquid natural gas (LNG) imports as of last year, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).