Last week, Russia once again pulled the nuclear weapon threat out of its sleeves, two days after US President Donald Trump — following his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte — threatened to impose 100 per cent secondary tariffs on Moscow if it doesn’t reach a deal with Kyiv in 50 days. Trump also confirmed that “top-of-the-line” weapons, including the Patriot missile defence system and batteries, would be sent to Ukraine in an operation coordinated by NATO members.
Russia’s newly updated nuclear doctrine apparently allows Moscow to use nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear weapon state that is supported by a nuclear one, unsettling deterrence dynamics in Europe. Though Trump’s about–turn on the Russia-Ukraine war might bring some sigh of relief in Kyiv, Moscow’s counter-threats echo a Biden-era tit-for-tat escalation when Washington’s no-holds-barred support for Ukraine’s war efforts was met with Moscow’s nuclear threats.
The question is: will Trump’s threats be enough to affect any change in Russia’s behaviour? Or will such threats be counter-productive, embolden Putin’s hand, and give him more ammunition to project a Russia reclaiming its lost status of parity with the US and standing up to the combined might of the Western alliance?
Sanctions’ toothless bite
Sanctions are meant to bite, and not just bark. They are coercive economic tools that the US and its Western allies have often used as a default policy to punish adversaries. However, do they really affect consequential changes in a country’s behaviour as expected? In the case of Russia, sanctions have won tactical gains, but have failed to achieve the desired strategic goals.
US–led Western sanctions have hit Russia since 2014, when the latter annexed Crimea from Ukraine after the Maidan Square event. Though Russia has seen rising inflation, labour shortage, and devaluation of its currency, the sanctions have had too little impact to make Moscow kowtow. On the contrary, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation has kept the key rate at 21.5 per cent per annum, indicating that inflation and economic growth are relatively stable under the current circumstances. The Russian stock exchange market has also continued to grow despite Trump’s warnings. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has forecasted Russia’s growth rate in 2025 at 1.5 per cent while the Russian Economic Development Ministry has kept it at 2.5 per cent.
This month, the US Senate tabled additional sanctions on Russia, calling them a ‘sledgehammer’. Sanctions on Russia will also impact countries that trade with Russia in oil, gas, uranium, and other products. Such secondary sanctions on third countries are reportedly proposed to touch 500 per cent. Some US lawmakers are even hinting at the US, together with its European allies, accessing frozen Russian assets, including the $5 billion located in the US, to dent Russia’s warfighting resources and utilise the money in Ukraine’s reconstruction. This would be an unprecedented move as no US president has ever taken the central bank assets of a foreign country that the US is not at war with.
However, secondary sanctions have not been too successful either, with Russia, through its ‘shadow fleet’, exporting energy to the other countries, including China, Turkey, UAE, Belarus, and Armenia. Moreover, partner countries of the US such as Turkey, UAE, and Armenia have not participated in sanctions, creating an enforcement gap, helping Russia maintain access to sanctioned goods and continue its economic activities.
A report, published by the Kyiv School of Economics, estimated that the shadow fleet transports about 70 per cent of Russia’s seaborne exports, and in the first nine months of 2024, earned Russia an extra $8bn in oil sales. In fact, a report by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) shows how Russia has been evading sanctions by opening new overseas branches and subsidiaries of Russian financial institutions. Wars do not come cheap, and the fact that Russia has been able to sustain the war with Ukraine and foot the comprehensive military bill amidst the onslaught of the Western sanctions, speaks volumes about the latter’s relative failure. Moreover, sanctions cannot completely restrict trade to sanctioned countries. First, these sanctions being largely US–led and not UN-mandated, downgrades its global legitimacy and effective enforcement. Second, many countries that trade in Russian oil through transhipment have created alternatives, helping Russia circumvent the sanctions.
Also read: Trump’s Ukraine U-turn puts Russia’s trade partners at risk. India caught in the middle
Trump’s reputational crisis
Former Russian President and Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev, taking to X, said, “Trump issued a theatrical ultimatum to the Kremlin. The world shuddered, expecting the consequences. Belligerent Europe was disappointed. Russia didn’t care.”
Why is Moscow pooh-poohing Trump’s threats? Is Trump’s dealmaker credentials facing a reputational crisis? And is he “chickening out” too often, after issuing maximalist threats? Trump’s position on the Russia-Ukraine war has swung like a pendulum. And the divide between Republicans who would like a more hawkish stance against Russia and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) base supportive of less involvement in the war is sending mixed signals about Washington’s resolve to stay united on a particular path. MAGA stalwart Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia congresswoman and one of Trump’s most staunch allies in Washington, said, “MAGA voted for no more US involvement in foreign wars.”
Trump’s negotiating style of employing a mix of maximalist demands for compromise from Ukraine while simultaneously going soft on Russia has clearly not yielded results. It has failed to affect any change in Putin’s objectives through the war: de-Nazification, de-militarisation, preventing Ukraine’s NATO membership, and occupying the critical territories of Ukraine such as Donetsk and Luhansk, which are rich in rare earth minerals.
Moreover, Putin’s ambiguity and delays on Trump’s peace deals, and European allies standing strongly with Ukraine — particularly after Trump’s verbal spat with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — has pushed Washington’s new curve. Even Trump cannot rock too many boats at the same time, it seems. During his more recent meeting with Zelenskyy, on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral, Trump said that he wondered whether Putin was sincerely interested in ending the war in Ukraine, as he continued a bombing campaign that included targeting civilian structures. While the recent NATO Summit in the Hague, where NATO members agreed to increase defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP in the next decade, did do good optics for Trump and Western alliance’s solidarity, Trump’s Moscow policy seems all over the place — from placating Putin to berating him. The leaked audio released by CNN, where Trump could be heard telling a private meeting of fundraisers last year that he once threated to “bomb the s**t out of Moscow” to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine during his first term, is merely a blip in the radar of Trump’s theatrical oeuvre. And the clip seems to have hardly caused a stir in the Kremlin.
Moreover, Putin’s grip over the war narrative in Russia is overwhelming. For Russia’s domestic audience, the war is not an act of aggression against a weaker country, but an unrelenting test of Russian resilience to reclaim what it considers as its own territory. Russian people see it as standing up against the US-led West and reclaiming the country’s lost glory of a great power in the category of the US.
In a quirky twist of global narratives, the US and the West — and not Russia — seem to be facing more heat for having failed to resolve the war. While there is no doubt that Russia invaded Ukraine, a retelling of contemporary history in context of NATO’s eastward expansion and Trump’s shenanigans has put the West on a weaker footing. Facing the wrath of Trump’s tariffs and his hyper-transactional style of foreign engagements, the Global South is at tenterhooks and seems hardly interested in aligning with the West, or in taking sides in the Russia-Ukraine war. For the majority of the Global South, including India, the regional wars and the geopolitical tensions among great powers are reckless irritants making a dent on political bandwidth and the scarce resources that could better be used for meeting developmental challenges. Moreover, the recent attack by the US on Iranian nuclear sites under Operation Midnight Hammer gives more confidence to Moscow in calling out America’s double standards on sovereignty and military interventions. The action by the US also allows Russia to leverage the narrative to carry out attacks on Ukraine with impunity, and negotiate from a position of strength.
Therefore, the impact of fresh sanctions on Russia remains doubtful. And the 50 days of reprieve rather could be music to Putin’s ears, who would continue on the current path without much Western intervention for close to two months.
Moreover, is Trump’s U-turn and increasingly hawkish stance on Russia bringing him closer to the very position of his predecessor whom he once vehemently criticised? Or is it merely a stunt to divert attention from the growing storm at home over the Jeffrey Epstein files? In both cases, he is locking horns with his MAGA base. So, the ramifications are still anyone’s guess.
On the other hand, even with the Russian gambit, does Trump have any cards to show? Is he offering anything substantive to Kyiv that could, on the battlefield, completely turn the tide and really bring Putin to the negotiating table on the terms of the West? Is Trump really ready to play ball with Putin, given that he is rather prone to playing safe with the Russian president?
The Russia-Ukraine war exposes a complex paradox of power, wherein, the most powerful country in the world, with all its economic and military resources, is falling severely short in coercing a much more truncated Russia to kowtow to its demands. Putin’s recurrent resort to the threat of using nuclear weapons does show a counter-coercion move of the weaker power to deter a strong power. But it seems to be working in the current circumstances.
In the final analysis, the US and the West are facing a dilemma. Allowing Russia to take Ukraine and recognising the territories occupied by it will downgrade the status of the US in the international order. It will also provide an opening for China to take over Taiwan and will embolden it and Russia toward more coercive actions in their spheres of influence. Therefore, the Russia-Ukraine war is a critical front, which will have an outsized influence on the near future of America’s status and influence in the international system, and on the broader questions of power and its deployment to affect regional and global outcomes.
Indrani Talukdar @TalukdarIndrani is a Fellow and Monish Tourangbam is a Senior Research Consultant at the Chintan Research Foundation (CRF), New Delhi. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)