Jan 7 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump will allow a bipartisan sanctions bill targeting countries doing business with Russia to move forward in Congress and it could be put to a vote as early as next week, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said on Wednesday.
Graham said in a statement Trump had “greenlit” the legislation after the pair met on Wednesday.
The legislation, which Graham has been working on with fellow Republicans and Democrats for months, would impose sanctions on countries doing business with Russia, including buyers of its energy exports, over Moscow’s failure to negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
“This bill will allow President Trump to punish those countries who buy cheap Russian oil fueling Putin’s war machine,” Graham said, citing China, India and Brazil as potential targets of the legislation.
Graham, a senator from South Carolina, said he is looking forward to a “strong bipartisan vote” on the legislation to take place as early as next week.
Leaders in the Senate and House of Representatives have held off bringing the legislation to a vote as Trump has preferred to impose tariffs on goods imported from India, the world’s second-leading buyer of Russian oil after China.
A U.S. official told Reuters in November that Trump would sign the legislation if it passed, but would insist on specific language ensuring he remained in control of the sanctions.
Talks aimed at bringing the almost four-year war in Ukraine to an end have accelerated since November. The U.S. on Tuesday backed a broad coalition of Ukraine’s allies in vowing to provide security guarantees that leaders said would include binding commitments to support the country if Russia attacks again.
However, Moscow has yet to signal willingness to make concessions after Kyiv pushed for changes to a U.S. proposal that initially backed Russia’s main demands. Moscow has also given no public sign that it would accept a peace deal with the security guarantees envisaged by Ukraine’s allies.
(Reporting by Ryan Patrick Jones in Toronto; editing by Costas Pitas and Cynthia Osterman)
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