President Donald Trump’s warning that any country “doing business with Russia” faces the prospect of “very severe” sanctions marks a potential shift in the economic front of the war in Ukraine, with significant implications for major economies across the Global South.
Speaking in Florida, Trump said congressional Republicans were preparing legislation that would target states maintaining commercial ties with Moscow and possibly Tehran, signalling an expansion of Washington’s use of secondary sanctions. The initiative dovetails with the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025, a bipartisan proposal in the US Senate that would authorise sweeping measures against Russia and countries that continue to buy its energy exports.
According to draft proposals reported in US and European media, the legislation envisages tariffs of up to 500 per cent on imports from states that purchase Russian oil, gas or uranium, and potentially on goods originating in Russia itself. The aim is to cut off the Kremlin’s principal revenue streams by making trade in Russian energy prohibitively costly for third countries and their refineries.
The new push comes on top of recent US measures that have already hit Russia’s energy sector. In October, Washington designated Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two largest oil companies, along with a broad network of subsidiaries, restricting their access to US markets and threatening secondary sanctions on foreign financial institutions that continue to deal with them. Lukoil has since announced plans to sell many of its international assets, citing mounting difficulties in maintaining global operations.
These steps are designed to complement earlier EU and G7 embargoes, price caps and restrictions introduced after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which forced Moscow to redirect much of its oil to Asia. For policymakers in Washington and allied capitals, the remaining gap is the willingness of key Global South economies – notably India, China and Turkey – to keep buying discounted Russian crude and petroleum products, providing Moscow with vital budget income despite Western sanctions.
From a Ukrainian perspective, the proposed escalation of US secondary sanctions is seen as a way to force governments outside the Euro-Atlantic community to choose between access to the American market and continued trade with Russia. Advocates of this approach argue that, if aligned with strict enforcement and only limited, time-bound exemptions to allow alternative supply arrangements, such measures could compel refineries in Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere gradually to phase out Russian crude. They contend that this would erode Russia’s fiscal base and narrow its options for financing a long war.
The same school of thought links economic pressure to Ukraine’s growing capacity to strike Russian oil and refining infrastructure with long-range drones. In this view, sanctions that constrain exports, combined with physical damage to production and processing facilities, increase the cost and risk of sustaining Russia’s current military campaign. The objective is not immediate capitulation in Moscow, but a cumulative effect that, over several years, alters the calculus of Russia’s leadership about the feasibility of achieving its goals in Ukraine.
Another element of this strategy is the debate over frozen Russian state assets in Western jurisdictions. Around $300 billion in Russian central bank reserves and other sovereign holdings have been immobilised since 2022. Some Ukrainian and Western policymakers argue that these funds should be converted into a long-term source of finance for Ukraine’s reconstruction and defence, making clear that they will not be returned even in the event of a ceasefire, unless international legal and security conditions are met.
Proponents also maintain that there should be no political compromise with the current Russian leadership about the underlying norms at stake. In their view, any sustainable settlement requires a framework in which Russia’s ability to make decisions that violate international law is constrained by external economic and legal mechanisms – a form of de facto protectorate over key sectors of its economy and access to global finance. They argue that this would send a clear message domestically in Russia that alignment with international rules is the only path to economic normalisation.
At the same time, the proposed US measures carry clear risks. Analysts have warned that tariffs on the scale discussed – up to 500 per cent on trade with dozens of countries – would be unprecedented and could generate significant disruption in global energy and commodity markets, with knock-on effects for inflation and growth in both advanced and emerging economies. Critics in Washington and abroad caution that broad embargo-like regimes have historically been difficult to enforce and may prompt affected states to seek alternative financial and trading arrangements outside the US-centred system.
The debate over Trump’s warning, and over the Sanctioning Russia Act more broadly, therefore goes beyond Russia and Ukraine. It raises wider questions about the future of secondary sanctions, the willingness of the United States to leverage its market power against major partners such as India and Turkey, and the degree to which the Global South is prepared to align with Western positions on aggression and international law. For Kyiv, however, the calculation is straightforward: the more effectively Russia’s wartime economy is constrained, the sooner serious negotiations on ending the war might begin.
