Trump is not responding forcefully enough against Russia

Telegraph

a day ago

President Donald Trump is getting serious about the Russian threat. After pledging new arms shipments to Ukraine and threatening crippling secondary tariffs if Russia does not sue for peace in fifty days, Trump blasted Russian President Vladimir Putin's peace entreaties as 'all talk and no action.' Despite these castigations, Trump maintained hope that Putin might make moves towards peace in Ukraine before the fifty-day mark.
This optimism does not reflect the current mood in the Kremlin. Trump's major announcement was greeted with relief rather than alarm in Moscow. The Moscow Stock Exchange increased by 2.7 per cent and the Russian rouble rose 0.8 per cent against the Chinese yuan. Russian officials feared sweeping new sanctions and were pleased to see that Trump was only willing to impose largely unenforceable tariffs against the BRICS countries.
The rhetoric emanating from Putin's coterie of hardliners was as confrontational as ever. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev threatened to strike Western countries if they escalated the Ukraine War. Rossiya-1 defence commentator Igor Korotchenko implored Russia to intensify its strikes on Ukrainian critical infrastructure and expressed hope that these attacks would force Ukraine's capitulation within fifty days.
The Russian military is converting this bellicose rhetoric into aggressive actions. On July 16, Russia fired over 400 missiles and drones on Ukraine's energy infrastructure. Russia has amassed 160,000 forces around Kupiansk in Kharkiv and the Donetsk battlegrounds of Pokrovsk and Kostiatynivka. A large-scale Russian summer offensive in eastern Ukraine is expected to commence within days.
These warning signals indicate that Trump is not responding forcefully enough against Russia. A genuine maximum pressure approach is needed to compel Putin to accept a peace agreement in Ukraine. This maximum pressure strategy should consist of three interrelated components.
The first is the removal of loopholes in the sanctions regime that provide Russia with the resources it needs to prosecute further aggression. Although Rosatom is involved in the occupation of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and has assisted Iran's civilian nuclear energy programme, the US has refrained from sanctioning it. This exemption has helped Rosatom leverage its labyrinthine corporate structure and allegedly finance Russia's defence industry.
Instead of imposing secondary tariffs on importers from Russia, the US should impose targeted sanctions on refineries that produce Russian oil. Vaibhav Raghunanda, an analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, estimates that these sanctions would deprive the Kremlin of $750 million in annual tax revenues.
Shadow fleet sanctions also need to intensify until the estimated 600 tankers that Russia uses are designated. The US needs to coordinate with the EU on curbing Russian sanctions evasion loopholes in their formative stages. The sanctions regime is fundamentally reactive in nature, and this allows Russia to hone its circumvention tactics before Western powers can respond.
The second is the broadening of the array of weapons that reach Ukraine. Trump's Nato ally-funded arms package will most likely include a Patriot Air Defence battery and ATACM long-range missiles. While $10 billion in arms supplies sounds like a lot, it is important to emphasise that Patriot batteries cost $1 billion to build, their interceptor missiles cost $3.7 million each and ATACMs cost $1 million per missile.