The US Department of Treasury has announced new sanctions targeting Russia’s two largest oil companies - Rosneft and Lukoil - in an effort to pressure Moscow to negotiate a peace deal in Ukraine.
The US Department of Treasury has announced new sanctions targeting Russia’s two largest oil companies - Rosneft and Lukoil - in an effort to pressure Moscow to negotiate a peace deal in Ukraine.
This makes absolute sense: Trump always goes for options he can walk back on and which have direct effects he can boast about.
Sending Tomahawks would be far more effective, but can’t be fully walked back (you can’t just “unexplode” whatever they were used to explode) and their effects are indirect so Trump can’t just gloat that “I did this”.
Trump is a dumb person’s idea of what a smart person looks like, driven by nothing more complex than wanting to look like he’s winning, and if you try and find any more complex motivations for him than “what will make me look good today” it will be an impossible task because he’s far more shallow than the average person: he doesn’t play 5D chess, he plays 1D chess.