US Russia sanctions bill advances in Senate but faces major hurdles

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Long-anticipated Russia sanctions legislation proposed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham is heading toward passage in the Senate. That doesn’t mean the road ahead will be easy, and it certainly won’t be quick.

The House won’t even be able to consider the legislation until representatives return to Washington in September, when concerns over a tariff provision in the bill could derail its passage. And it still faces hurdles in the Senate, where all 100 lawmakers need to strike a deal to rush consideration of amendments before they leave town.

The timing is crucial for Kyiv, which is looking to Washington to help curb Russia’s ability to continue waging its full-scale war while Ukraine has a window of advantage in the yearslong conflict. Moscow has struggled recently to make territorial gains on the battlefield, while Ukraine has launched a series of strikes deep into Russian territory.

“We have to continue to work to move it forward,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a Democratic co-sponsor of the bill, adding that she hoped senators could quickly strike an agreement on amendments to push through the legislation before the August recess.

As for the opposition to the legislation, “come on, they only got 12 votes,” Shaheen said, referring to Tuesday night’s 86-12 procedural vote . One person familiar with Democrats’ efforts to advance the legislation said they are hopeful the bill will pass in both chambers — and get signed into law by the end of the year.

But President Donald Trump is already offering potential changes that could derail the legislation. On Wednesday, he appeared to suggest that the bill — which also extends certain sanctions on Iran, per Trump’s request earlier this month — should go further and include tariffs on buyers of Iranian oil.

Trump floated that Republicans should add language related to Iran akin to a provision putting tariffs on the top five buyers of Russian oil that has provoked Democrats’ anxiety.

“I would like them to add Iran as tariffs, not just the sanctions,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I think it’s important. That’s what Lindsey wanted.”

The White House referred back to Trump’s earlier comments when asked for additional details on his proposal.

It’s this kind of back and forth that scuttled earlier versions of the bill, and which lawmakers and Kyiv were hoping to avoid given the momentum behind the bill as Graham’s legacy piece of legislation.

“Sanctions are crucially important,” said Sergiy Kyslytsya, deputy head of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, though he acknowledged that “it will take some time for them to have full impact and affect” Russia’s ability to continue the war. “It’s great that the Senate and the Congress are moving ahead,” he added.

In an address to senators ahead of a vote on the bill, Zelenskyy stressed the impact sanctions could have on the trajectory of the war. A Ukrainian official said on Wednesday that the feeling in Kyiv was “positive” after more Democrats than expected voted in favor of the legislation — and after a good meeting between Zelenskyy and Trump on Tuesday.

But the bill’s path to the White House is thorny, even in its current form.

The pain point for Democrats — and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who joined 11 Democrats to vote no on Tuesday — is the provision that would give Trump the power to sanction the top buyers of Russian energy. Critics worry that the language would hand more tariff tools to a White House already eager to slam both friends and foes with the economic cudgel.

Among a raft of amendments up for consideration this week, Paul is pushing a change to rein in Trump’s tariff powers.

Senate Foreign Relations Chair Jim Risch (R-Idaho) said that new amendments to the bill could pose a challenge to getting Trump’s final signature. The White House has previously said it agreed to the current text of the legislation, so any deviation could risk Trump withholding his final approval.

“I think it’ll go to the House as is,” Risch said.

Despite Trump’s shifting target-setting, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said he trusted the president’s vow of support for the legislation.

“Those assurances have been made to other members, and I take them at face value,” Wicker said, though he said he had not spoken to the White House directly on the matter. “I really don’t think there’s much doubt about that. The hill to climb is the House.”

The tariff battle is likely to continue in the House when lawmakers return from August recess.

In a preview of likely opposition to the bill in the House in September, Rep. Richard Neal (Mass.), the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, released a joint statement with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) earlier this month slamming the latest version of the bill.

“It is extremely dangerous to give Trump massive new tariff powers, particularly after we’ve seen the disastrous impacts of his corrupt, chaotic, and inflationary tariff spree,” the lawmakers cautioned.

But the door may still be open for negotiating a compromise with dubious Democrats.

House Foreign Affairs ranking member Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) said in a statement this month that while he wouldn’t support “handing President Trump a Trojan horse for tariff authorities he has repeatedly abused,” he still remained “open to negotiating a good faith compromise.”

His Senate counterpart was optimistic about the possibility of bringing naysayers onside, framing the discontent over the bill’s tariff provision as a misunderstanding about its scope. “People are still looking at the bill that was first introduced,” which would have allowed the White House to hit purchasers of Russian energy with 500 percent tariffs, Shaheen said.

At a press conference Tuesday evening, the SFRC ranking member said she was hopeful the recess would provide an opportunity to address concerns about the bill and smooth its path forward.

“We need to talk to folks about what their concerns are, and we’ve got some time to do that because the House is not coming back for a while,” Shaheen told reporters.

Jerry Wu, Veronika Melkozerova, Felicia Schwartz and Ben Johansen contributed to this report.