The Senate’s New Ukraine Bill Will Not Work—But Here Is How to Fix It

Stephen Sestanovich is the George F. Kennan senior fellow for Russian and Eurasian studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis professor emeritus at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

This Ukraine Policy Brief is part of the Council Special Initiative on Securing Ukraine's Future and the Wachenheim Program on Peace and Security.

Members of Congress have launched a potentially significant effort to toughen U.S. strategy toward Russia’s war in Ukraine. On April 1, Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025 (SRA2025), which calls for—in Graham’s words—“bone-crushing” sanctions to cripple the Russian “war machine.” Supporters of the bill, which now has over eighty cosponsors, have portrayed Russian President Vladimir Putin as an untrustworthy negotiating partner, someone who lies to U.S. officials (and to President Donald Trump) so as to dodge new sanctions and keep his brutal war going. “That guy,” Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) has declared, “is stringing President Trump along.” Adds Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD), “Nobody likes to see somebody try to play the president.”

Senators Graham and Roger Wicker (R-MS), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, have predicted that the chamber will take its first votes on the bill in June. Majority leader John Thune (R-SD) has mentioned the same time frame. To further signal political momentum, Graham often claims that members of the House are ready to force votes on a Senate-passed bill by using a “discharge petition” to bring it to the floor.

From the beginning, the bill’s backers have emphasized its overlap with Trump’s own policy preferences. Introduced a day before the president announced new global tariffs on April 2 (the so-called Liberation Day), SRA2025 also relies heavily on punitive import duties. Graham, who insists he has coordinated his actions with the White House, has praised Trump’s efforts to negotiate an end to the war and seconded every presidential burst of impatience with Russia.

Until recently, however, this effort to cast the Graham-Blumenthal bill as supportive of administration policy has failed to move the president. Although regularly criticizing Putin’s actions and threatening new sanctions, Trump has just as regularly chosen not to act. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has expressed concern that sanction threats could simply mean “the Russians will stop talking.”  

Even so, Putin’s unwillingness to cease hostilities—his readiness to launch ever-larger attacks on Ukrainian cities and to announce maximalist goals in peace talks—has steadily strengthened congressional advocates of a tougher policy. Over time, perhaps in the next few weeks, Trump could yield to this pressure and let SRA2025 move forward. At that point, the specifics of the bill, and its own severe shortcomings, will attract greater attention.

Provisions of the Graham-Blumenthal Bill

The Sanctioning Russia Act is a strange document. The provisions that have attracted the most attention are also the ones least likely ever to be implemented. Policymakers, experts, and friendly governments alike will label them reckless, irresponsible, and self-defeating. (This could be why the bill’s authors rarely mention them in any detail.) And, although SRA2025 aims at stricter enforcement of some sanctions that the United States has already adopted, it ignores some of the most important steps that need to be taken. One of the most urgently needed forms of support for Ukraine—increased U.S. security assistance—is mentioned only as an aside in the bill’s opening paragraphs and then forgotten in the thirty pages that follow.

To trigger sanctions, SRA2025 requires a presidential determination every ninety days that Putin is refusing to negotiate a peace agreement with Ukraine. Once the president makes such a determination, a series of sanctions would be set in motion. These would be imposed on both Russian officials (starting with Putin himself) and “oligarchs,” on banks and other financial institutions (whether they are part of the Russian state or just loosely affiliated with it), and on other entities owned by or affiliated with the Russian government.

Also prohibited by the bill are the listing of any Russian stocks on U.S. exchanges, investments by American individuals and companies in the Russian energy sector (or any investments that benefit the Russian government), purchases of Russian sovereign debt, access by any Russian bank to “international financial messaging systems,” imports of Russian uranium, U.S. support for loans to Russia from any international financial institution, and more. Direct imports from Russia would be subject to tariffs of “not less than 500 percent.”

All those provisions of the bill set out direct sanctions on Russia and on most interactions with it by U.S. banks and companies. But SRA2025 goes much further, imposing tariffs—also of at least 500 percent—on any country that imports Russian “oil, uranium, natural gas, petroleum products, or petrochemical products.” Such duties would amount to a near-total embargo on U.S. trade with China and India, among many other countries. In his public statements, pressure on China is the element of the bill that Graham invokes most often. Continued purchases of Russian energy by those countries, he warns, are “fueling Russia’s war machine.” If China and India continue to do so, they cannot have “a normal relationship with the U.S. Senate.”

Sanctions legislation typically establishes conditions under which the president can waive the application of sanctions. SRA2025 is significantly more restrictive. Once the president finds that Russia is refusing to negotiate, virtually all the sanctions it sets out become mandatory. Only the tariffs on countries importing Russian raw materials can be waived—and only once, for a period of 180 days.

Likely Impact of SRA2025

Sponsors of this bill likely hope the extreme threat it makes—to bring the international economy to a standstill—will be extremely effective. Graham calls it a game-changer. Yet making astronomically high tariffs the center of U.S. policy toward Russia’s war is misguided: a threat that will never be carried out lacks real coercive power. And a bill that stops all trade with the United States’ most important commercial partners is precisely that kind of threat. Even trade with the European Union, which still purchases Russian gas and some oil (although both at sharply lower levels than in the past), would be subject to 500 percent or higher tariffs. By putting cooperation between the United States and Europe at risk, SRA2025 actually undermines Ukraine’s security. No one-time, six-month waiver of these extreme provisions would make the bill more workable.

Supporters of SRA2025 could, of course, argue that the 500 percent tariffs could be used as a bargaining chip, to be exchanged for other, more viable—and more valuable—measures. Or they could say they are ready to set tariffs at a less punitive level (20 percent, perhaps). One advocate of the bill has suggested that it could be voted on but then not sent to the president, giving Trump time to get other governments to toughen their policies.

These approaches are not realistic. Tariffs of 500 percent have no plausible bargaining value (as the Trump administration recently discovered in backing off 145 percent tariffs on Chinese goods). They simply harm the United States too much. Even with much lower numbers, the last thing U.S. trade negotiators need is to add Putin’s war to the agenda of already complicated talks with countless other governments. As for the vote-and-hold idea, delaying implementation does not solve the underlying problem: sky-high tariff provisions will never be implemented and make the bill’s passage very unlikely. Before SRA2025 is adopted, then, those sections will surely be dropped.

The direct Russia-focused sanctions of SRA2025 face the opposite problem: not that they will never be implemented but that they already are, at least in part. Putin himself is already sanctioned; both the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ have already halted trading of Russian securities; investment in Russia by U.S. firms has already largely ceased; sanctions announced by the Joe Biden administration in January 2025 already block energy-sector services and technology transfers to Russia, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank already stopped lending to Russia; Congress already passed legislation prohibiting Russian uranium imports a year ago; and so forth.

A Better Approach

Some enthusiasts of SRA2025 defend the bill because it allows members of Congress to show Trump their undiminished support for Ukraine. This is good, but it reflects a much too modest conception of what the legislative branch can do to help end the war. Those who want to do so should, on an urgent basis, seek to strengthen the Graham-Blumenthal bill by making sure that it contains provisions that broaden the application of sanctions already adopted, strengthen their enforcement, and add useful, high-impact measures not currently included in the bill. Revisions could include the following:

• Although the U.S. government imposed an impressive array of sanctions on Russia in the past three years, gaps remain that enable Moscow to earn U.S. and other Western funds through energy exports. The three largest Russian oil and gas companies—Rosneft, Gazprom, and Lukoil—were never sanctioned by the Biden administration, nor were several smaller oil companies. Sanctioning them now, as well as all Russian banks, and then imposing secondary sanctions on Chinese and Indian banks that do business with them, would be a far more effective way of cutting Russian export earnings than the hopeless tariff threats made by SRA2025.
• Further reducing the $60-per-barrel price cap adopted by Group of Seven (G7) governments in December 2022 holds similar promise (the Graham-Blumenthal bill does not even mention the price cap, much less propose adjustment). The cap has not been lowered since it was first imposed—a major boon for Moscow’s macroeconomic prospects. One expert estimate finds that a $30 cap would by now have reduced Russian oil revenue by 40 percent. A cut of this kind would have a fundamental effect on Russian finances. Senator Graham has endorsed a lower price cap. The bill could commit the president as well.
• Implementing and enforcing sanctions such as these will only be possible if the United States cooperates closely with European governments—a further reason to abandon an approach that treats all importers of Russian energy equally (whether they are Moscow’s allies or Washington’s). Enforcement is one area the U.S. government has itself neglected. Rather than let the administration dissolve its task force on sanctions enforcement or withdraw from intergovernmental platforms on sanctions and export controls, Congress should put pressure on the executive branch to take enforcement seriously.
• A further element of a more effective strategy toward Putin’s war on Ukraine—and one completely unexplored by SRA2025—would be the seizure of Russia’s sovereign assets, most of them now frozen in European banks. Those funds, totaling as much as $300 billion, offer the easiest short-term way to meet the need described at the very beginning of the Graham-Blumenthal bill for increased security assistance to Ukraine. Administration officials have indicated that they are ready to authorize sales of military equipment to Ukraine paid for with Russian assets. Yet a Congress genuinely committed to Ukraine’s long-term security would also put pressure on the administration to offer U.S. funds (perhaps in the form of Foreign Military Financing grants and loans, or by replenishing Presidential Drawdown Authority) to help Ukraine defend itself.

Finally, sponsors of SRA2025 should reconsider the bill’s link between sanctions and negotiations. If senators believe Russia is not serious about ending hostilities, that judgment—not the president’s (and certainly not a presidential judgment that can be revised every ninety days)—should be the starting point of their bill. Boosting sanctions immediately would provide a quick incentive for Putin to begin reexamining his strategy. Congress should give President Trump an opportunity—perhaps after six months—to report on the state of ceasefire talks, but sanctions should not be eased by a mere reading of Putin’s good faith or even by the start of negotiations. The process of gradual sanctions relief should begin only when the shooting has stopped.

A Policy Opportunity

Congressional support for Ukraine is impressive, and stronger sanctions are a crucial tool for making it meaningful. An improved SRA2025 can advance U.S. interests and help Ukraine achieve a sustainable peace.

This work represents the views and opinions solely of the author. The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.