How We Went From Everyone Knowing Trump Would Not Sanction Putin To Fooling Ourselves That He Would

PHILLIPS P. OBRIEN

MAY 26, 2025

Hi All

Over the last six months, we have witnessed maybe the greatest example of political gaslighting in US foreign policy history. Ever since Trump was elected he has preened, postured, and acted like he could at any moment impose sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s Russia for its grotesque behavior during the Russo-Ukraine War. Just last night we had another example of this. After a weekend of Russia attacking civilian targets in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, killing many innocents, Trump once again wielded the threat of sanctions in this tweet.

And, like lemmings, people ran off and said this is it—Trump might finally bring in sanctions against Russia! The amazing thing is that after six months of such toothless threats people were still talking about Trump actually sanctioning Russia—when he clearly has no intention of doing so. To give you an idea of the extraordinarily repetitive nature of the threats, and why people should have never taken them seriously in the first place, I think its worth while going through the last year chronologically—to see just how preposterous the sanctions threat pantomime has become. Apologies if this is long—but its been an extraordinary process and does need to be understood.

Moreover, these threats are actually helping Putin. They are part of Trump’s plan to gaslight Europeans into thinking he might do something—and are delaying tactics to keep others from acting. So not only are they gaslighting, they have been tragically successful examples of gaslighting. 

At First, Sanctions Were A No-Go Area For Trump

Trump is overwhelmingly and instinctively opposed to sanctioning Putin. Since the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine he has gone out of his way to make that clear. Indeed in the six months before the 2024 election, he and his acolytes made it clear that his goal was to reduce the sanctions on Russia. 

Maybe the best place to start the story was this piece, based mostly on anonymous sources within the Trump group (but also the open participation of Senator Lindsey Graham) in the Washington Post published on April 7, 2024. It was the first dry run of a Trump plan to end the war, and what it made clear was that extra sanctions on Russia were not being contemplated. In fact, the Trump plan seems to have been to try and win Russia away from China, and that would even require sanctions relief.

Peeling Russia away from China would presumably involve sanctions relief, since the Kremlin has turned toward Beijing to try to offset broad-based Western sanctions on its energy, defense and financial sectors, said Jeremy Shapiro, head of the Washington office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, who brought the group’s delegation to the meeting in November.

A few days later a more detailed Trump peace plan was released in a report written by Keith Kellogg, Trump’s pro-Ukraine beard, and Fred Fleitz, and issued by the America First Committee. 

Kellogg and Fleitz came up with a very harsh peace plan for Ukraine that they thought would appeal to Trump (its worth noting that even though it was extremely harsh, it was actually better than the plan Trump tried to force on Ukraine a few weeks ago). As part of the Kellogg-Fleitz plan, Russia was to be offered partial sanctions relief if it agreed to a ceasefire—and possibly total sanctions relief if a full agreement was reached. As was said on page 16.

Until happens, the United States and its allies would pledge to only fully lift sanctions against Russia and normalize relations after it signs a peace agreement acceptable to Ukraine.

So those who first started discussing Trump’s plan to end the war shied away from the idea that he would ever impose sanctions on Russia—which was only the truth as the presidential campaign itself demonstrated. During the campaign, Trump went to great lengths to show just how opposed he was to sanctions on Russia. In July 2024, not long after he was shot, Trump openly stated that he was opposed to using sanctions in general. In September 2024, when Trump was asked outright if he would strengthen sanctions on Russia, he (angrily) pivoted in the other direction and stated that he did not want more sanctions—indeed he hated the idea of sanctions altogether.

“I want to use sanctions as little as possible…You’re losing Iran, you’re losing Russia. China is out there trying to get their currency to be the dominant currency…There’s so much conflict with all these countries that you’re going to lose” (the dominance of the dollar).

If you want to watch Trump saying that himself—you can see it here.

This was typical—until he was elected, Trump was openly and avowedly anti sanction in general and specifically anti-sanction on Russia—and those who had some idea how he might want to end the war understood that. 

Then Trump got elected and everyone lost their mind.