To stop Putin’s horrors, we must first drain his war chest

Last night's press conference in Alaska offered no answers and no substance.

What Ukrainians have hoped for at minimum would be a real and immediate ceasefire, seen now on the ground, as a lead-up to a true and just peace. True and just peace has the only meaning of the full de-occupation of Ukraine, real security guarantees, and accountability for Russia’s war crimes and destruction delivered through tough sanctions on its oil and gas, and by using frozen assets to rebuild what has been destroyed.

True peace efforts must respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and be paired with a clear commitment to renewable energy.

Instead, we saw cynical words from Putin calling Ukraine a ‘brotherly nation', while his army bombards our cities and no real commitments from President Trump. And to be frank, this summit also wasted a crucial opportunity - instead of giving Putin another platform, the world should have seized the chance to hold him accountable and arrest him.

We know all too well that every so-called promise from Putin is followed only by more missiles, more drones, and more death. Yet in Alaska, after nearly three hours of talks, the world was left once again with nothing but empty statements.

A grain of salt is still larger than the concrete steps Russia has taken toward peace in this war or committed to during this summit. We can only hope that, behind the scenes, there were no dangerous resource-for-peace trade-offs such as using Ukraine’s rare earth minerals or other natural resources as bargaining chips, particularly through joint US-Russia business ventures on occupied territories.

The tragic human cost of Putin’s broken promises is felt every day in Ukraine, where there are no signs of de-escalation, only brutal attacks. In the past 24 hours, Russia launched missile strikes, air strikes, and conducted thousands of shell and drone attacks across our country. To stop Putin’s horrors, we must drain his war chest, and that means cutting off Russia’s fossil fuel exports and applying real, relentless pressure.

I call for not just further meetings, but for these concrete measures to be implemented now.

Trump should announce that he will sign US Senator Graham’s existing “bone-crushing” sanctions bill, which contains tough 500% tariffs.

Place full sanctions on all Russian fossil fuel exports, and put secondary sanctions on countries that consume them, like President Trump did on India last month, and threatened this week to tighten further.

Strengthen sanctions on LNG exports, especially the sanctions from Jan 2025 on Arctic LNG, one of Putin’s personal favourite new mega-energy projects.

Create international mechanisms to find and track the illegal shadow fleet of ships exporting Russian oil. Enforce existing laws to dry up the industry.

Imposing a total embargo on Russian fossil fuels and, at a minimum, lowering the oil price cap to $20–25 per barrel.

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Svitlana Romanko is the Founder and Executive Director of Ukrainian climate campaign group Razom We Stand.

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