OP-ED: Shaheen and Warren Beg Trump to Stop Feeding Putin with Russian Oil

Two Senators Against an Incomprehensible Policy

On June 17, 2026, while the world had its eyes glued to the G7 in France, two American senators — Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — took up their pens to beg their own president to stop giving gifts to Vladimir Putin. The word is not too strong. This is indeed a plea, a call to reason launched from Capitol Hill toward the White House, from a Democratic America watching, helpless and furious, as a Republican administration repeatedly extends what everyone knows is a financial lifeline for Moscow.

General License 134C is the technical name for this sanctions waiver that allowed countries like India to buy Russian oil at sea without risking American sanctions. First issued on March 12, 2026, and renewed twice despite promises not to, it was set to expire this June 17 at midnight. Shaheen and Warren asked that it be allowed to die. For good. The story of this appeal is that of an America fighting itself over a barrel of Russian oil that is worth far more than its market price — because it pays for drones, missiles, and Ukrainian coffins.

The Trumpian Paradox at the Heart of the Crisis

There is something absurd — and deeply revealing — in the fact that it was Donald Trump himself who, at the G7 on June 16, suggested that sanctions on Russian oil could soon be reinstated. "Soon we'll be able to do that, because the oil is flowing now," he said on the sidelines of the summit. The next day, the license expired without renewal. A coincidence? A calculated decision? Consistency is not this administration's forte. What is certain is that Shaheen and Warren were right from the start: each extension of these exemptions only served Moscow.

The real question is not technical. It is not about oil. It is moral and strategic: can we claim to want peace in Ukraine while fueling Putin's war machine? Can we talk about maximum pressure on Russia while signing waivers that bring the Kremlin an additional $150 million per day? The answer is no. And two American senators had the courage to say it loud and clear, in a country where criticizing Trump has become a high-stakes sport.

I'm not naive about American politics. Shaheen and Warren aren't doing this out of pure altruism — they have their partisan battles, their constituents, their calculations. But on this specific issue, they are right. Objectively, factually, strategically right. And that deserves to be said unequivocally.

March 2026: The First Waiver and Its Hollow Justifications

To understand why Shaheen and Warren were at their wits' end in June, we have to go back to March 12, 2026. That day, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced the issuance of a general license allowing the purchase of Russian oil already loaded on ships as of March 12. The official justification was the war between the United States and Iran, which had caused the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and pushed Brent above $100 a barrel. Global supply had to be secured; markets had to be calmed. Bessent called the measure "targeted and short-term." It would not, he said, provide "significant financial benefit to the Russian government." We saw how that went.

From the very first days, Indian refineries bought at least twenty million barrels of Russian oil thanks to this waiver, according to the Atlantic Council report. Meanwhile, discounts on Urals crude were narrowing, or even turning into premiums. Reality contradicted official promises with a statistical brutality that even the administration's supporters could not ignore. The Kremlin, for its part, didn't hide it: its spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declared with icy confidence that Moscow had "learned to act in a way that minimizes the impact of such measures." Translation: thanks for the gift, we know how to take advantage of it.

April-May: Broken Promises and Shameful Renewals

On April 11, 2026, the first license expired. Bessent stated categorically on April 15: the administration "will not renew the general license on Russian oil." Two days later, on April 17, the license was renewed for one month. The Kyiv Independent ran a headline with surgical precision: "US renews Russian oil reprieve, days after signaling it wouldn't." This sequence — solemn promise, silent reversal — was to be repeated. On April 25, Bessent promised again that there would be no third waiver. On May 18, the third waiver was issued. US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz defended the decision, stating that "this is not a reward for Russia." Nobody believed him.

Democratic senators, in a joint April statement with Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, had already sounded the alarm: Russia and its intermediaries were earning more than $150 million a day, or more than $4 billion since the issuance of the first license. Not only was the oil selling again, but higher global prices were further inflating the Kremlin's revenues. The administration claimed to be helping American consumers. Prices at the pump remained stubbornly high. The only thing that had clearly increased was Putin's war budget.

This pattern of broken promises deeply revolts me. Not because I am naively surprised by politics — I’m not — but because behind every renewal of this license, there were Ukrainian soldiers dying under missiles funded by this money. Numbers are abstract. The dead, however, are not.

A Call for Consistency, Not Ideology

The June 17, 2026, statement from Shaheen and Warren, published via the Senate Foreign Relations Committee website, is not a partisan text. It is a document built on the internal logic of Trump's own statements. The two senators reproach him for his glaring contradiction: he claims the war against Iran is over, that the deal with Tehran is holding, that the Strait of Hormuz is open again — and yet he was considering extending a waiver whose sole raison d'être was the energy disruption caused by that very war. "A renewal would clearly contradict President Trump's declaration that the war against Iran is over," they wrote. This is political judo: using the president's own arguments to pin him down.

But Shaheen and Warren don't stop there. They level something more fundamental: "If the administration renews this license now, it will be the clearest sign that President Trump either does not believe his own deal, or will simply refuse to ever confront Putin, even after more than four years of conflict and countless innocent lives lost." This is a grave accusation. It says, in essence, that Trump is afraid of Putin. Or that he is indifferent to him. Both hypotheses are catastrophic for the international order that the United States claims to defend.

Ukraine Is Winning — And Trump Should Know It

One of the strongest lines in the statement is this: "We hope President Trump understands what is obvious: Ukraine is winning." It is a statement that cuts through the surrounding narrative of stagnation and fatality. Shaheen and Warren assert that if Trump truly wants a peace deal, he should increase the pressure on Putin, not offer him additional financial rewards. "Showing weakness like this will only invite more aggression," they concluded, "and further delay the end of the war."

This reading is consistent with what serious observers have been saying for months: Putin only negotiates under duress. When sanctions bite, when oil revenues collapse, when the war budget trembles, Moscow becomes more flexible. The Atlantic Council had warned as early as March 2026 that economic pressure on Russia was finally starting to bear fruit — Russia's oil and gas revenues in 2025 represented only 23% of total federal revenue, their lowest share in two decades. Releasing that pressure with oil waivers was sabotaging years of coordinated sanctions work among Westerners.

I deeply believe that Zelensky is fighting not only for Ukraine, but for a principle that concerns us all: that a sovereign democracy cannot be crushed by a neighboring tyrant without the world reacting. When Shaheen says Ukraine is winning, I want to believe it. I have to believe it. The alternative is too dark to contemplate.

$150 Million a Day: The Price of Complacency

Let's put the numbers in perspective. According to estimates by US Democratic senators, Russia was earning $150 million more per day thanks to the sanctions waivers. In the three months of the license — from mid-March to mid-June 2026 — potentially more than $13 billion could have flowed into Russian coffers beyond what they would have earned without these waivers. Olga Khakova, a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, is even more precise about the use of this money: "These windfall profits funded an unprecedented scale of drone and missile attacks on Ukraine this spring." This is what Scott Bessent's budgetary calculations are worth in human terms.

To put this figure in context: while the United States debates for weeks to unlock a few hundred million in military aid to Ukraine, the American administrative machine was distributing the equivalent of a billion dollars in additional revenue to Moscow every week. This is not rhetorical exaggeration — it is the arithmetic reality of this policy. Russian oil exports jumped from 4.9 million barrels per day in February 2026 to 6 million barrels per day in May 2026, according to S&P Global Commodities at Sea. Every extra barrel exported in this context of high prices represented money directly funding the war against Ukraine.

The Price Cap Dismantled, Circumvention Facilitated

What the Atlantic Council revealed is even more disturbing: the general license issued in March 2026 effectively supplanted the oil price cap implemented by the G7 since 2022, by easing both restrictions on major Russian oil companies and the cap itself. In other words, the American waiver didn't just let oil already at sea pass through — it undermined the entire architecture of Western sanctions. Once Washington showed flexibility, insurers, traders, and refiners recalculated their risk exposure. The market of signals is as important as the regulations themselves in terms of oil sanctions. And the American signal was clear: the lock can break.

Worse still: the Russian ghost fleet, those tankers operating in the shadows to bypass sanctions, continued to operate throughout this period. Timothy Ash, an associate fellow at Chatham House, estimated that Russia had sold a substantial portion of the volumes at sea before the war against Iran even intensified. The American oil reprieve, therefore, didn't really solve a fundamental problem — it rewarded a Russia that had already found its own ways around, while diplomatically legitimizing them.

The Russian ghost fleet fascinates me for all the wrong reasons. It is a monument to ingenuity in the service of evil: hundreds of old tankers, renamed, reflagged, sailing in the blind spot of Western intelligence services. And here we are, debating whether to add a waiver for their oil. Kafka would have loved this story.

Jerry Moran, Republican from Kansas, Says Stop

One of the most significant aspects of this saga is that it transcends partisan divides. Republican Senator Jerry Moran of Kansas also urged Secretary Bessent not to renew the Russian oil waiver when it expired on June 17, 2026. Moran had spoken on the Senate floor as early as March in unambiguous terms: "The recent decision to suspend oil sanctions on Russia and Iran in an attempt to stabilize oil prices frees these two adversaries to sell their oil at market prices." When a conservative Republican from Kansas says the same thing as two Democrats from New Hampshire and Massachusetts, it's a sign that something fundamental is at stake — not partisan politics, but elementary strategic logic.

In the preceding weeks and months, a bipartisan group of senators had even attempted to introduce legislation requiring Congressional approval before the White House could ease Russian sanctions. The text, presented in late April 2026, aimed directly at ending the practice of unilateral renewals. This initiative reveals something important: the American Congress, in its ideological diversity, is more consistent on Russia than the executive branch is. That is no small thing in a country where bipartisan agreement is becoming increasingly rare.

Rubio on the Hot Seat: Shaheen's Grilling in June

On June 8, 2026 — nine days before the expiration of the last license — Shaheen had already subjected Secretary of State Marco Rubio to a heated interrogation during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. The video, broadcast on YouTube, shows Shaheen attacking directly: "President Trump has given Russia a lifeline by allowing it to sell oil globally through licenses issued by the Treasury." She asked Rubio if he could commit to not renewing the general license when it expired on June 17. Rubio's response, elusive and bureaucratic — "it depends on the circumstances of the moment" — spoke volumes about the administration's mindset.

Rubio added that the administration "would like to end it as soon as possible" because the underlying policy remained to sanction Russian oil. But Shaheen turned the argument back with precision: "If we keep renewing them, they are no longer time-limited." It is an implacable logic. A temporary measure that is renewed indefinitely ceases, by definition, to be temporary. It becomes the permanent policy — with all the long-term effects that implies for the credibility of Western sanctions.

Watching Shaheen grill Rubio reminded me why democracies, despite all their flaws, still have an intrinsic value that their adversaries do not. A senator can look the Secretary of State in the eye and say: you are lying, or you are contradicting yourself. In Russia, this conversation does not exist. This is why Ukraine must win.

Spring Strikes Funded by American Licenses

Khakova of the Atlantic Council does not mince words: the windfall profits reaped thanks to the American waivers directly funded an unprecedented wave of drone and missile attacks against Ukraine in the spring of 2026. This is a serious assertion, coming from a serious institution, and it deserves to be echoed without mitigation. Russia has exported approximately 300 million barrels of oil to international markets since the issuance of the first waivers, according to Atlantic Council calculations. 300 million barrels. At prices inflated by the war itself.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had himself warned as early as March 2026, during a press conference in Paris alongside Emmanuel Macron: "This easing, on its own, could provide Russia with about $10 billion for the war." He added: "This certainly does not contribute to peace. Lifting sanctions will only cause drones to fly toward you later." Zelensky was not fantasizing. He was describing a financial mechanism whose outcome was military. The massive spring strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure confirmed his analysis.

The Ebbing Pressure and Ukrainian Resistance

What makes the situation even more bitter is that the sanctions were starting to produce real effects before the waivers. The Atlantic Council recalled that Russian oil and gas revenues had fallen to their lowest level in two decades in terms of their share of the federal budget. In January 2026, Russian oil and gas receipts had been halved year-on-year, to 393.3 billion rubles. In February 2026, oil and gas export revenues had fallen to the lowest level since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The IMF predicted Russian growth of only 0.8% in 2026. The vice was tightening. Then the waivers arrived, and the vice loosened.

Meanwhile, Zelensky and the Ukrainian army held on. They struck oil depots and electrical substations in occupied Crimea and Russian regions. They maintained military and economic pressure on the adversary. The absurd paradox is that Washington sanctioned with one hand and subsidized with the other: on one side, we applauded Ukrainian resistance; on the other, we signed licenses that funded the missiles aimed at that very resistance.

I think of Zelensky standing in Paris in March, trying to explain to Macron that American waivers were funding the war against his country. He didn't look angry — he looked exhausted. Exhausted from having to repeat the obvious to people who have the luxury of not understanding immediately because it isn't their cities that are burning.

A Treasury Secretary with Disposable Promises

Scott Bessent became, despite himself, the central character of this story. He is the one who issued the licenses. He is the one who renewed them after promising not to. Each cycle followed the same script: Bessent announces publicly that the renewal will not take place, the renewal takes place a few days later. In April 2026, he said Washington "will not renew" the license on Russian oil. Two days later, renewal. In May 2026, Bessent said the United States "does not plan" another renewal for Russian oil. On May 18, the third renewal. At a certain point, the markets even stopped listening to Bessent's statements — they simply waited for the new license to be published on the Treasury website.

The Democrats in their April statement highlighted an essential legal point: the administration had ignored the requirements of notification to Congress provided for by the Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) before easing sanctions on the Kremlin. This is a bipartisan law passed precisely to prevent an executive from unilaterally selling off hard-won leverage. Bypassing it is not just a procedural hiccup — it is a signal sent to Moscow that American control mechanisms are negotiable.

The War in Iran as a Convenient Pretext

The pretext invoked from the beginning was the US-Israeli war against Iran, triggered on February 28, 2026, which had closed the Strait of Hormuz and created an unprecedented global energy disruption. Bessent's argument: markets needed Russian oil to avoid a major shock. The argument is understandable as an immediate emergency response. It ceases to be so when the emergency is prolonged indefinitely, when markets adapt, when Iran negotiates a memorandum of understanding with the United States, when the Strait of Hormuz reopens — and the waivers continue anyway.

Shaheen and Warren had the clarity to name this reality: "This effort has clearly failed since Americans have been burdened by significantly higher prices at the pump and in grocery stores since the beginning of the conflict." Not only were the waivers helping Moscow, but they weren't helping American consumers. The economic argument thus collapsed on both fronts simultaneously. Only political will — or its absence — remained as an explanation for these repeated renewals.

I’m not an economist. I can't precisely model the impact of oil waivers on pump prices in Oklahoma or Ohio. But when senators say prices rose despite the waivers, and Atlantic Council analysts confirm Russia profited massively, I don't need a PhD in economics to draw a conclusion: someone was lying, or someone was wrong. Neither of those options is reassuring.

European Allies Destabilized by American Ambivalence

One of the most insidious effects of the American waivers was their impact on the cohesion of Western allies. The Atlantic Council identified this from the start: once the United States showed flexibility, some Europeans used that as an argument to demand easing on their side. Hungary and Slovakia, already unenthusiastic about Russo-Ukrainian sanctions, demanded that Ukraine renew the transit of oil through the Druzhba pipeline. The idea that the firmness of some can be undermined by the complacency of others is not theoretical — it is a well-documented dynamic in the history of multilateral sanctions regimes.

At the G7 in June 2026, leaders of the seven richest countries in the world pledged to strengthen sanctions on the Russian oil and gas sector. That's beautiful on paper. But when one of the G7 members has just granted three successive waivers that injected billions into Moscow's war chest, the commitment rang hollow. The credibility of a sanctions regime depends on its consistency. Every exception creates a precedent. Every renewal erodes the trust of allies and strengthens the resilience of the target.

China and India: The Major Collateral Beneficiaries

American waivers didn't just benefit Moscow. China and India were the primary buyers of the Russian oil released by the licenses. India, in particular, had received the first bilateral waiver on March 5, 2026, even before the general license was issued. Indian refineries had rushed for Russian oil. For China, purchases continued via established circuits. At the G7 summit, leaders spoke of secondary pressure on China to stop fueling the Russian war economy. But how can this secondary pressure be exerted on Beijing when Washington had just authorized Russian oil purchases for the most "energy vulnerable" countries — a category in which India, a strategic ally but major buyer of Russian oil, was naturally included?

This is the fundamental contradiction of this policy: one cannot simultaneously sanction Russia to stop the funding of its war, offer waivers to allow others to buy that sanctioned oil, and then blame China for doing the exact same thing but without the American waiver. China — already the greatest long-term strategic threat to the West — watched and took note. The rules do not apply uniformly. This lesson has a cost we have not yet finished paying.

China worries me as much as Russia, perhaps more in the long term. Beijing watches this circus with a mix of satisfaction and strategic insight. Every time the West contradicts itself, every time the rules bend, Beijing learns a lesson about the solidity — or fragility — of the liberal international order. We are giving them an accelerated course in sanctions politics. And they are taking notes.

When the Only Player Available Plays Poorly

I have said it in my previous columns and I maintain it: Trump is a necessary evil for the West. Not because his policies are good — some are disastrous, and this one is a prime example — but because the alternative, in the current American political configuration, does not offer better guarantees over time. The West needs an America that is strong, engaged, and predictable. Trump is not always those three things. But he remains, for now, the America we have.

On the Russian oil waivers, Trump made a mistake. A real mistake, not a communication error, not a rhetorical blunder — a policy error that had measurable consequences in Ukrainian lives and Russian dollars. This is not incompatible with him being a "necessary evil": even necessary allies can be wrong. The important thing is to say it, to name it, and to hope that the pressure exerted by Shaheen, Warren, Moran, and their colleagues produces results. The fact that the third license was finally not renewed after its June 17 expiration is an encouraging first sign — even if the history of the first two expirations teaches us to be wary of what happens in the days following.

Oil Leniency as a Strategic and Moral Failure

What I reproach this policy for is not its genesis — the war in Iran created a real emergency — but its perpetuation without justification. An emergency waiver that lasts three months ceases to be an emergency. It becomes a deliberate policy, with clearly identified beneficiaries. Putin was one of them. And Putin is not a good-faith partner. He is a man who invaded a sovereign country, who deliberately targets civilians, who assassinates his opponents, who funds destabilization operations across the entire West. Granting him oil leniency — even temporarily, even with market justifications — is a strategic and moral failure. These two dimensions are inseparable in geopolitics.

Shaheen and Warren were not asking for the moon. They weren't demanding new sanctions, no diplomatic rupture, no sending of troops. They were simply asking that the United States stop making an active exception in favor of Russia. This is the ethical minimum one can expect from a country that calls itself the guardian of the liberal international order. This minimum, for three months, was not respected. This is why their June 17 appeal resonated with such urgency.

There is something deeply uncomfortable in my own position on Trump. I criticize him on this policy, and I am right to do so. But I also recognize that he operates in a system where domestic political constraints — oil markets, energy lobbies, pressure from allies like India — are real. My criticism is just. My understanding of the context, I hope, is as well. This is not complacency: it’s analytical honesty.

The Ghost Fleet and Parallel Circuits

Even without American waivers, Russia had developed a sophisticated architecture to bypass sanctions. The ghost fleet — those hundreds of old tankers renamed and reflagged — continued to carry Russian crude to Asian markets at slightly lower prices, but enough to maintain revenue flows. Khakova of the Atlantic Council emphasizes that even if the waiver is not extended, Russia will likely continue to redirect its exports to Asian buyers at reduced prices. The machine has learned to operate in the shadows. Waivers do not just help it — they legitimize and strengthen it.

This reality makes the argument that waivers were necessary to "secure global supply" all the more absurd. If Russian oil continues to flow despite sanctions thanks to the ghost fleet, the only thing an official waiver adds is a commercial legitimacy that improves Russian margins and reduces risks for buyers. This is not energy policy — it is a disguised subsidy to a war economy.

The Price Cap: A Fragile Architecture

The G7 implemented a price cap on Russian oil in 2022 — a sophisticated mechanism that allowed buyers to acquire Russian crude provided it was sold below a certain threshold, thus depriving Moscow of the most important marginal revenues. This mechanism had its flaws — the ghost fleet bypassed it — but it maintained pressure and an international norm. The waivers of March-June 2026 have effectively undermined this architecture, as the Atlantic Council noted, by easing restrictions on major Russian oil companies as well as the cap itself. Years of laborious multilateral diplomacy, partially undone by a few licenses signed unilaterally in Washington.

The senators — Shaheen, Warren, Moran, and others — all understood this systemic dimension. Their fight was not just about the revenues of this or that quarter for the Russian Treasury. It was about the long-term credibility of the tools of economic pressure that the West has at its disposal against its adversaries. If sanctions are perceived as negotiable, reversible, subject to discretionary exceptions, their deterrent effect disappears. The next time a country crosses a red line, it will know that sanctions have a price ceiling — and that this ceiling can be lifted in case of sufficient political constraint.

The architecture of sanctions is like a dam. It doesn't just serve to contain the water right now — it serves to signal that the water shall not pass. Breaches, even small ones, even temporary ones, change everyone's calculation. The Russians now know the dam has doors. And they have the keys.

What Peace Really Means

There is one word that constantly recurs in the Trump administration's discourse on Ukraine: "peace". Trump wants peace. Bessent wants peace. Rubio wants peace. The problem is that peace is not a natural state that emerges when the belligerents are tired — it is the result of a balance of power. And in this balance of power, every additional billion dollars that Russia draws from its oil translates into ammunition, missiles, drones, and additional days of war. Oil waivers do not bring peace closer. They push it away by recharging the nuisance capacity of the attacking party.

Shaheen and Warren formulated it clearly: if Trump is sincerely interested in a peace deal, he should increase pressure on Putin to accept a just and lasting peace, not give him more sanctions relief. It's elementary. Putin does not negotiate out of generosity or moral exhaustion — he negotiates when his military and economic options shrink. Offering him financial breathing room does not speed up negotiations, it delays them. Every extended waiver is a week, a month of additional war bought for Moscow.

Ukrainian Victory: A Reality Not to Be Betrayed

Zelensky is holding on. Ukraine is holding on. After more than four years of total war, against a larger adversary, better armed originally, and possessing an incomparably superior strategic depth, Ukraine has not fallen. This is not trivial. It is historic. And it is the result of a combination of Ukrainian courage, Western support, and accumulated economic pressure on Russia. Weakening this third pillar with oil waivers is betraying a process that works — imperfectly, painfully, but works.

Shaheen says Ukraine is winning. I want to believe that is true. Zelensky is the hero of this story — not because he is perfect, but because he chose to stay, to fight, to keep a democracy standing under the bombs. This choice deserves to be actively supported, not passively. The minimum of this active support, from Washington, was to not fund the adversary through oil waivers. This minimum was not respected for three months. On June 17, with the expiration of the license, there was a correction. Let's hope it holds.

I speak of Zelensky as a hero and I assume that word entirely. This is not propaganda — it is a factual recognition. A head of state who stays in his besieged capital, who refuses the exile offered to him, who continues to govern and to fight: that deserves a strong name. Hero is not too strong. Sometimes, you have to call things by their name.

Pump Prices and Voter Anger

There is a painful irony in this story: one of the official justifications for the oil waivers was to keep energy prices low for American consumers. However, as Shaheen and Warren pointed out, pump prices in the United States did not go down despite the licenses. They remained high, or even increased, because the root causes of the price hike — the war, the closure of Hormuz, market volatility — were not resolved by a few tens of millions of additional Russian barrels. American consumers thus suffered a double penalty: high prices AND the indirect funding of the Russian war.

This political calculation is exactly what Shaheen and Warren tried to make the administration understand. Not only was the policy morally flawed, it was politically ineffective. It gave the appearance of acting on prices without producing the real effects, while creating considerable reputational risks — being the administration that helped Putin fund his war during a declared period of peace with Iran. This is a record that is difficult to defend at the ballot box.

The National Security Argument Trump Doesn't Want to Hear

Beyond prices, there is a national security argument that the administration seems to have had difficulty integrating. Russia was helping Iran during the war — with intelligence, according to some sources. It was actively supporting an adversary against whom the United States was fighting militarily. Rewarding this same Russia with oil waivers during this period was, in the words of the joint April statement by Shaheen, Schumer, and Warren: an action taken "even while Russia was helping Iran target and kill members of the United States Armed Forces." If this fact is accurate, it is of absolute gravity. You cannot be at war with a country and subsidize its ally.

The logical order of things commanded: suspend any waiver favoring Russia until the military situation clarifies, demand guarantees, condition any sanctions relief on concrete Russian concessions regarding Ukraine. This is the basic manual of economic coercion. The Trump administration did not follow this manual. It followed a short-term crisis management logic that sacrificed long-term strategic leverage for immediate oil gains that, moreover, did not materialize.

The fact that Russia was helping Iran target Americans while Washington granted it oil waivers is one of the hardest things to swallow in this story. If it is true — and Democratic senators say it under their own signature, so they have good reason to believe it — then we are no longer just talking about questionable energy policy. We are talking about a betrayal of fundamental American national security interests. This is a grave accusation. It deserves a serious investigation.

A Positive Signal, but Broken Trust

The third license finally expired on June 17, 2026, without immediate renewal. The US Treasury did not publish an extension. Trump had hinted the day before that sanctions could be reinstated since oil was flowing again through the Strait of Hormuz. This is a positive sign. Shaheen and Warren asked for something, and it happened. The pressure worked — at least in the immediate term. We must recognize this partial victory.

But the history of the first two expirations commands caution. Each time, the license had expired before being renewed a few days later. The market, diplomats, allies — all have learned not to trust expirations as a definitive signal. The trust in the consistency of American policy is broken. It cannot be repaired overnight. It will take weeks, months, perhaps years of consistency to restore the credibility of American sanctions as diplomatic leverage. And every day that this credibility is weakened, Moscow benefits.

What Should Be Done Now

Shaheen, Warren, and their colleagues have a clear agenda. They want the administration to actually increase the pressure on Russia rather than continue to manage the image of a firmness that does not exist. This implies: relaunching regular sanctions designations, particularly against Chinese entities fueling the Russian defense industrial base; strengthening sanctions on the ghost fleet; opposing any attempt at Russian banking reintegration under false pretenses; and working with G7 allies to maintain a united front. This program is not radical — it corresponds to the official American policy stated since 2022.

The fact that it takes senators to remind the executive of its own official commitments is revealing of an administration that has lost the thread of its own policy. Trump announced sanctions on major Russian oil companies — Rosneft and Lukoil — in October 2025. Shaheen hailed it as "a good start" while demanding more. Then came the war in Iran, and the waivers undid part of the work accomplished. June 17 represents a chance to reset the clock. What comes next will tell if the administration has learned the lessons of these three months or if it will fall back into the cycle of broken promises.

I write this column with a cold anger and a cautious hope. Anger, because three months of oil waivers funded attacks on Ukraine. Hope, because citizen, senatorial, and allied pressure finally had an effect. That is no small thing. In a world where good news is rare, I will take this for what it is: a sign that vigilance and the public voice can still shift the lines. Even in American politics. Even under Trump.

What This Case Reveals About the West

The 2026 Russian oil waiver affair is not an anomaly in a system that would otherwise function well. It is an indicator. It reveals the fractures in Western strategic consistency, the compromises between immediate economic interests and long-term objectives, the difficulty of a democracy maintaining the course of a costly policy over time. These fractures, Putin knows them. He counts on them. They have been part of his resistance strategy from the start: hold on long enough so that fatigue, internal contradictions, and the economic interests of some weaken the Western consensus. The oil waivers were an unexpected gift in this strategy.

Shaheen and Warren did not save Ukraine on their own. They did not solve the fundamental contradiction of an administration that says it wants peace while appearing incapable of defining what a just and lasting peace concretely means. But they kept alive a bipartisan conscience that the United States has obligations — toward its Ukrainian allies, toward its own credibility, toward the international order it claims to defend. This is precious. It is insufficient. But it is real.

Vigilance as the Only Antidote to Passive Complicity

What I take away from this story, beyond the numbers and licenses and broken promises, is that citizen and institutional vigilance has value. Shaheen and Warren shouted. The media covered it. Allies reprimanded. And on June 17, the license expired without renewal. This may only be temporary. It may only be an interlude before a fourth renewal. But it is also proof that noise makes a difference. Silent resignation would have produced a different result.

The West cannot afford to be complacent on Ukraine. Not because Ukraine is perfect — no country is — but because the principle at stake transcends Ukrainian borders. If Putin succeeds, the next dictator with borders to change will learn the lesson. The causal chain is direct: oil waivers → Russian revenue → drones and missiles → Ukrainian deaths → weakness of the principle of territorial sovereignty → international chaos. Shaheen and Warren saw it. One must hope that Trump saw it too. And that he remembers it.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. I claim analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

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This text keeps the basic distinction between verified facts and interpretive analysis. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under Sources, never here.

Primary source families used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

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When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under Sources.

Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a critical, contextual synthesis based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.