The EU has announced another package of sanctions on Russia in response to President Trump’s demands that the continent take greater action if the EU wants more assistance from the United States. Keith Johnson explains in Foreign Policy:

The European Union finally announced its latest package of proposed sanctions on Russia, after a week spent trying to satisfy nearly impossible demands by U.S. President Donald Trump for Europe to pile even more pressure on the Kremlin.

The measures flagged in the EU’s 19th sanctions package, while still incremental, and subject to approval by all EU member states, would represent a significant tightening of Europe’s efforts to cut out the financial and material underpinnings of Moscow’s war machine.

The EU’s slow-but-steady economic onslaught, which coincides with Ukraine’s own aerial offensive against the physical underpinnings of the Russian oil industry, stands in sharp contrast to U.S. inaction. Since Trump took office, the United States has taken no additional steps to increase sanctions pressure on Russia, though it has tried to browbeat India, a big buyer of Russian oil, through tariffs.

On Thursday, in a press conference with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Trump said that Russian President Vladimir Putin “has really let me down,” but Trump reiterated that he will not take additional action until Europe moves first and further to squeeze Russia and its main customers.

The growing bifurcation between Europe and the United States regarding pressure on Russia matters, because only the U.S. Treasury and the global role of the U.S. dollar and U.S. financial system can put real teeth into any sanctions measures, whether those meant to cut off Russian energy earnings or those meant to penalize third-country partners and customers.

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