By Matthew Chance, CNN's Chief Global Affairs Correspondent
US President Donald Trump (R) and Russian President Vladimir Putin shake hands at the end of a joint press conference after participating in a US-Russia summit on Ukraine at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska. Photo: AFP / DREW ANGERER
Analysis: The Kremlin may have convinced itself that US President Donald Trump didn't have the stomach to apply real pressure on Moscow to end the brutal conflict in Ukraine.
It was, after all, just a carefully timed Kremlin phone call to the White House last week that convinced the US president to back away from his own threats of providing long-range Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv, missiles that could have made a real difference on the battlefield.
But the new US Treasury sanctions on Russia's two biggest oil companies may now force the Kremlin strongman, Vladimir Putin, to finally reassess his American counterpart, if not his Ukrainian war.
Already an outspoken Putin ally, Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president who is now the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, has slammed Trump as "the talkative peacemaker who has now fully embarked on the war path against Russia."
"This is his conflict now, not the senile Biden's," Medvedev added in a social media post, referring provocatively to the former US president.
It's not that the sanctions themselves are particularly tough. True, oil is essential to the Russian economy, funding the Kremlin's costly war in Ukraine. It's also true that Rosneft and Lukoil, sanctioned along with dozens of their subsidiaries, are Russia's most significant oil producers.
But Russia, one of the world's most sanctioned countries, has proven adept at finding ways of circumventing these kinds of punitive measures in the past. It will, according to senior Russian officials, seek to do so again.
"The decision will not pose any particular problems for us. Our country has developed a strong immunity to Western restrictions and will continue to confidently develop its economic and energy potential," said Maria Zakharova, the Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, in a televised press briefing.
Photo: AFP / Andrew Caballero-Reynolds
The bigger problem for the Kremlin is that its favourite and well-tested strategy to manipulate the Trump White House - holding out the prospect of engagement on peace in Ukraine and dangling lucrative economic deals, while pressing ahead with its relentless military onslaught - appears to have run its course.
Finally, the US president, who has for months suspected the Kremlin may be simply "tapping (him) along" on Ukraine, has decided to act.
As well as imposing his first proper sanctions on Russia since the Kremlin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Trump also "cancelled" a proposed summit with Putin in Budapest, Hungary.
Just hours before, Russian officials - relishing the chance of another face-to-face presidential meeting - insisted there were "no obstacles" and that arrangements were actively being made, dismissing any suggestions of the summit being shelved.
But, in retrospect, that optimism appears to have been Kremlin wishful thinking too. Putin is, of course, extremely keen to show Russians and the wider world that - despite sanctions and an indictment for war crimes at the International Criminal Court - that he is far from isolated on the international stage.
When Trump rolled out the red carpet for him in Alaska this August, the leader of the world's most powerful nation standing shoulder to shoulder with the Kremlin boss, it was an easy diplomatic win for the Kremlin, which offered little to the White House in return.
There will, apparently, be no repeat performance in Budapest unless and until progress is made on Ukraine. The US Treasury has even suggested that more powerful American sanctions on Russia could follow, to further pressure the Kremlin into quickly talking peace.
It could be the start of what critics of Trump's handling of the Kremlin have long been calling for: a tough, new strategy to finally use considerable US leverage to try and force Putin to compromise on his maximalist war objectives.
These include Kremlin demands for Kyiv to surrender strategic swathes of territory in the Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, which Russia has so far been unable to conquer - a red line for the Ukrainian government and its European backers.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has described the US moves as "very important" and crucial to "bring Russia to the negotiating table." Meanwhile, European officials have also expressed satisfaction with Washington's apparently more hardline stance.
But after nine months trapped on the rollercoaster ride of this latest Trump presidency, there are ever-present anxieties. And behind the scenes in Kyiv, in Brussels and even in Moscow, few doubt that in the erratic, mercurial world of Trump, a sudden switch back to the Kremlin's point of view could be just another friendly, carefully-timed phone call with Putin away.
- CNN
