Editor’s Note
Former President Donald Trump’s recent threat to impose tariffs on buyers of Russian oil marks a significant escalation in the sanctions landscape. This move could reshape global energy markets and trigger complex diplomatic repercussions, particularly with major economies like China and India.
Donald Trump’s threat to impose additional tariffs on buyers of Russian crude oil, including India and China, has introduced a dramatic turn with far-reaching consequences to Washington’s list of sanctions. This could have a global impact and lead to diplomatic entanglements.
Nearly six months into Donald Trump’s second term, with the Russia-Ukraine war still raging, the United States finds itself at a crossroads, searching for ways to compel Moscow to end the conflict. Eager to erase Biden’s legacy but finding itself unwilling to be drawn into the conflict, President Trump has now threatened additional sanctions on the Russian economy. In a statement on July 14, 2025, Trump announced that the US would impose ‘secondary tariffs’ if Russia did not stop the war within 50 days. Two weeks after this statement, US President Donald Trump set a new deadline of 10-12 days, a move that appears to stem from frustration over the lack of progress on a peace agreement. However, the new element this time is that the new US punitive measures could target not only Moscow but also some of Russia’s close partner countries, including India.
US sanctions against Russia are nothing new. These sanctions have served various purposes at different points in Russia-US bilateral relations. Paradoxically, the first sanctions were imposed immediately after the end of the Cold War, just as Russia was opening up to the West. In a move of caution, observing the rapid influx of Russian immigrants into the US, these sanctions targeted influential Russian oligarchs and cronies who were allegedly linked to the ‘Russian mafia’.
In the late 1990s and during the 2000s, Washington blacklisted Russian defense companies over concerns about the proliferation of weapons and missile technologies. In March 1999, the US sanctioned the Tula Design Bureau, Volsk Mechanical Plant, and Tsniitochmash because they had supplied guided anti-tank missiles to Syria, a country the US had classified as a state sponsor of international terrorism. In August 2006, the US State Department sanctioned two Russian firms—arms exporter Rosoboronexport (ROE) and aircraft manufacturer Sukhoi—along with other entities from Cuba, India, and North Korea for providing Iran with materials that could be used to develop weapons of mass destruction or missile systems. After reviewing the case a few months later, the US removed Sukhoi from the list, although sanctions on ROE remained until 2010. Later, Russian defense institutions were removed from the blacklist as part of the Obama administration’s ‘reset’ (perezagruzka) talks with Russia.
US-Russia relations were already fragile and unstable, with incidents like the major July 2010 spy scandal reminiscent of the Cold War era, unsettling the thaw in relations. The ‘reset’ effectively ended with the arrival of the Magnitsky Act in late 2012. Although the bill repealed the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, normalizing trade relations between the US and Russia, it also imposed visa bans and asset freezes on individuals responsible for the death of lawyer and auditor Sergei Magnitsky and other human rights violations in Russia.
Sanctions on Russia were significantly escalated between 2014-2015 when the US imposed sanctions on individuals and entities responsible for ‘violating Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity’.