Trump’s sanctions waiver is about America, not Russia

Late on Friday night, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order exempting Russia from a sanctions measure passed by Congress last month. The decision is unlikely to affect the calculus of Russian President Vladimir Putin, or the trajectory of the war.

With this coming on the heels of the US-Russia diesel deal and the breakdown in the relationship between Trump and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky, Kyiv’s advocates have cast the sanctions waiver as a betrayal. But this is a misreading of Trump and his motivations. The move is better seen as another reminder of the one constant in the US President’s policy toward Ukraine and Russia: he will always put his own interests and those of the U.S. first.

When Congress passed the sanctions bill named after the late U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, Ukraine’s backers argued that the new legislation would be the death knell for the Russian economy. They argued that it would force Putin to return to the negotiating table, but this was always a fantasy. As critics of the bill noted at the time, the way the sanctions provisions were written almost guaranteed that the penalties intended for Russia would never be implemented.