Since President Trump retook the Oval Office, leaders across Europe have prodded him to forcefully back Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion. In recent weeks, some of them tried a new approach in private conversations with a president who they know often responds well to flattery.
In exchanges with Mr. Trump, those leaders, including Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor, praised the president for sending American bombers to deliver a major blow to Iran’s nuclear program, according to two European officials familiar with the matter.
They told Mr. Trump he could do something similar in Ukraine — not with bombs, but with a fresh batch of penalties aimed at crippling Russia’s economy.
The appeals were the latest chapter in a longstanding effort to bring Mr. Trump onboard with European attempts to turn the tide in Ukraine through a punishing hit on Russia’s economy.
The president finally appears to be warming to the idea.
Mr. Merz and his counterparts in France, Britain and Italy have publicly told Mr. Trump that new U.S. sanctions could force President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to enter serious negotiations about ending the war. Without them, Mr. Putin has been escalating and prolonging Russia’s attacks in an attempt to break Ukraine’s defenses.
Those escalations appear to have frayed Mr. Trump’s patience with Mr. Putin. The come after months of phone calls between the leaders and amid fading hopes from the White House that Mr. Trump could lean on his relationship with Mr. Putin — and pressure Ukraine — to broker a truce to end the war.
On Tuesday, fresh from what he portrayed as a frustrating phone conversation with Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump said he was “very strongly” considering supporting a bipartisan Senate bill that would impose severe sanctions on countries that purchase Russian oil. Those countries include China, India, Brazil and even some members of the European Union.
Oil production is a driver of Russia’s economy and a crucial source of revenue for Mr. Putin’s war machine. Western leaders have been trying to choke off those revenues since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, including with sanctions. They have not succeeded as well as they had hoped.
A new effort to target the sector is included in the bill, which was offered by Senators Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut. It has 83 supporters in the Senate.
Some analysts have suggested that the legislation, if approved, could pack a much larger punch than any previously sanctions imposed on Russia.
“The economic impacts of the bill are stark and sweeping,” said Ben Harris, vice president and the director of the Economic Studies Program at the Brookings Institution. He helped craft a previous attempt to curb Russian oil revenues while serving in the Biden administration.
“Ultimately, there are only three plausible outcomes: a retreat by Russian forces, a meltdown in global energy markets or a worldwide recession owing to a tailspin in global trade,” Mr. Harris said. “There are no other outcomes. For this reason, the bill should be considered both courageous and risky.”
But other analysts warn that it would take time for the bill’s penalties to hit Russia hard enough to force Mr. Putin to negotiate, and that Mr. Trump might not follow through with many of them. Most of the penalties on Russia are “unrealistic and will never be implemented,” predicted Janis Kluge, a Russia expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.
“The bill’s main achievement is keeping the conversation about new sanctions on Russia going, which is an important goal in itself,” Mr. Kluge said. “However, it will not be a game changer in the war, and European leaders should not pin too much hope on it.”
Russian officials do not appear to be concerned about the prospect of Mr. Trump backing a new round of sanctions. Mr. Trump has issued no new Ukraine-related penalties on Russia this year, effectively allowing Moscow to acquire money and materials it needs.
And yet Mr. Graham stirred wide optimism in Berlin and across Europe when he visited Mr. Merz, the president of the European Commission, and other leaders last month to discuss his legislation. Soon after, Mr. Merz flew to Washington and urged Mr. Trump to back the bill, telling him and reporters in the Oval Office that the president was “the key person in the world” for ending the war in Ukraine.
Mr. Trump told reporters that he had a deadline “in my brain” for when he might back new sanctions — and suggested lawmakers would ultimately follow his lead.
In recent weeks, Mr. Graham and Mr. Blumenthal have worked to make their legislation more palatable to Mr. Trump while the president has grown more disenchanted with Mr. Putin. The senators now plan to give Mr. Trump wide discretion in determining how and when to enforce the financial penalties on Russia, among other changes to the bill.
At the same time, European leaders have continued to push Mr. Trump on the issue in public and in private. They have pursued their own new penalties in the European Commission but stressed to Mr. Trump that stricter sanctions from the United States would create leverage with Russia that no other nation could.
After a NATO meeting in the Netherlands late last month, Mr. Merz said he had told Mr. Trump once again that he was best positioned to help Ukraine. He said he had urged Mr. Trump to take advantage of the momentum from U.S. military strikes on Iran, “not militarily, but in terms of trade policy.”
Mr. Trump, he acknowledged, had not yet been swayed.
“An opinion-forming process is underway” with the president, Mr. Merz said, “but in my opinion, it is not yet complete.”
Reporting was contributed by Robert Jimison, Emma Bubola, Jeanna Smialek, Anton Troianovski and Paul Sonne.
Jim Tankersley is the Berlin bureau chief for The Times, leading coverage of Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
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