𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Russia reacted with outrage Thursday after the United States sanctioned its two largest oil companies, the first economic punishments slapped on Moscow by President Donald Trump during his second term.

Experts said it remains to be seen, however, the extent to which this move may damage the Russian economy or Vladimir Putin’s war machine as Trump hopes to pressure Moscow to halt its assault on Ukraine.

Days after canceling a planned summit with Putin, citing a lack of progress in the negotiations, Trump took the major step by effectively blacklisting Rosneft and Lukoil.

The announcement was welcomed by Kyiv and its European allies, who added their own new raft of sanctions on Moscow, while earning the ire of Russian officials and the country’s largely state-controlled media.

Speaking to journalists at the Kremlin on Thursday, Russia’s Vladimir Putin brushed off the likely impact. “They are serious in nature and will have certain consequences, but they will not have a significant impact on the health of our economy,” he said.

Putin added: “It is, of course, an attempt to put pressure on Russia. But no self-respecting country, no self-respecting nation, ever makes decisions under pressure.”

The Russian leader said that he understood the U.S. wished to “cancel or postpone” the summit, adding that “for both me and the U.S. President, it would be a mistake to approach this lightly and then walk away without the expected result.”

If anyone “still harbored illusions — here you go,” said hawkish ex-President Dmitry Medvedev, who now serves as the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council. “The USA is our adversary, and their loquacious ‘peacemaker’” — meaning Trump — “has now fully taken up the path of war with Russia,” Medvedev wrote in a social media post.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova added in a news briefing: “If the current U.S. administration decides to follow the example of its predecessors, who tried to pressure or force Russia to abandon its national interests through illegitimate sanctions, the outcome will be exactly the same: a failure, both politically at home and harmful to global economic stability.”

The move has been received in Russia as another flip-flop by Trump, who has tried to strongarm both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at different times during his second term.

“The U.S. president has changed his tune once again,” wrote Komsomolskaya Pravda, Putin’s favorite newspaper. Another paper, Moskovskij Komsomolets, likened the U.S. president to a “Kolobok,” a scheming bread bun from Slavic folklore.

Trump has often expressed verbal frustration with Putin, accusing him of making positive diplomatic noises before bombing Ukrainian civilians again, but until now relented from taking direct action.

This week, he said that meeting with Putin would be a “waste of time,” after Russia rejected American demands that a ceasefire should come before talks.

“We canceled the meeting with President Putin; it just didn’t feel right to me,” Trump said at a White House gathering of reporters. “It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I canceled it, but we’ll do it in the future.”

The sanctions drew praise from Ukraine and its supporters.

“We waited for this. God bless, it will work. And this is very important,” Zelenskyy said in Brussels.

This is far from the first time that Russia has been punished like this. Under the administration of President Joe Biden, the U.S., along with the European Union and others, tried to squeeze Russia’s banking and energy sectors, attempting to isolate it from the global market.

This did cause Russia some pain, with its oil and gas revenues declining after the initial measure introduced in 2022. However, it has been able to avoid the worst of it, with its 3.6% economic growth in 2024 outpacing even the U.S.’ 2.8%. It did this by increasing sales to China and India, and using its so-called “shadow fleet” of vessels to carry exports in off-book moves.

These ships were the target of new E.U. sanctions announced Thursday, which also sought to hit Russian energy and the ability of its diplomats to move freely in Europe.

Zakharova was bullish about Russia’s ability to weather these moves, as it has done before.

The measures “will not cause any particular difficulties,” she said. “Our country has developed a strong immunity to Western restrictions and will continue to steadily strengthen its economic and energy potential.”

Western analysts said the picture was more nuanced.

“Russia is extremely skilled at avoiding the consequences of Western sanctions,” Brett Bruen, the director of global engagement in the Obama White House and a career American diplomat, told NBC News.

Peter Harrell, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who served in the Biden administration, called the U.S. sanctions a “heartening move.” While Eddie Fishman, a senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University, agreed “this is a big step.”

However, he and others said that success of the sanctions would depend on two things: How strictly the U.S. is willing and able to enforce them; and whether it decides to take any actions on other countries buying Russian energy, namely the two Asian giants propping up Moscow so far.

“This won’t seriously deprive Putin of his war dollars unless we sanction the eight refineries that buy the oil in China, India,” said Bill Browder, an American-born investment fund manager and key Putin critic.

“Trump does not feel beholden in the same way that Biden was not touching third rails,” said Bruen — using the “third rail” metaphor to describe Trump’s willingness to grapple with previously “untouchable” foreign policy issues.

“And so if he is willing to use secondary sanctions, with more aggressive steps such as expanding the radius of where Ukraine can use Western weapons, all of that will mount pressure on Putin.”