I missed the carrots and thought that maximum pressure was already being applied all things considered thus far.. Sanctions, coup plots, instability at the border, NATO expansion etc.,
Read entirely at the link provided
Trump may yet convince Putin to agree to an immediate, unconditional cease-fire. If he does not, the United States should increase pressure to force Putin to the negotiating table and accept terms essential to a sustainable peace, including Ukraine’s long-term security. To start with, the administration should turn up the pressure on the Kremlin via comprehensive sanctions and technology export controls that target Russia’s main economic lifeline: energy exports.
The Trump administration should deploy a “maximum pressure” approach, especially on energy, since Russia’s oil and gas revenues continue to play an outsized role in Moscow’s ability to fund its military aggression in Ukraine. Given the domestic cashflow challenges already plaguing Moscow, a broader swath of energy sanctions and controls on oil field service technologies, if aggressively and comprehensively enforced, could help create the level of pressure required. And the administration has options.
The Trump White House has a wide menu available to continue to mount energy sanctions and restrictions on Putin’s Kremlin, and it appears to have taken the first step toward such a strategy in the past few days. On March 12, the US Department of the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) allowed the expiration of a temporary general license that had been provided by the Biden administration for firms to continue to process transactions related to energy purchases with a set of Russian financial institutions. This loophole has been open in various forms since just after Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022, and it is finally (and mercifully) now closed, restricting a key conduit for Russia to financially benefit from its energy exports.
First and foremost, the Kremlin-backed Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipelines must be a priority for the White House. Headlines related to their possible revival continue to appear, but the Trump administration should work to prevent their reestablishment. One way to do this would be for the White House to issue an executive order levying permanent blocking sanctions against Russian energy export pipelines, such as the pair of Nord Stream and TurkStream projects. These sanctions could also apply to the Yamal-Europe pipeline and other similar Kremlin-backed schemes, as well as Russian liquefied natural gas export terminals and vessels. The United States ought to be seeking to replace Russia on world energy markets, not allowing Russia to come back.
The administration, led by OFAC and the US intelligence community, should also intensify efforts to track, identify, and designate all vessels that are shown to be a part of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” of underinsured, sanctions-and-price-cap-busting oil tankers. The push to sanction Putin’s shadow fleet has been underway for some time, but due to the scale of the fleet, enforcement has consistently been behind the curve.
…
To reduce the risk of attestation fraud, OFAC could develop a “white list” of well-established oil traders with high levels of exposure to and legal accountability in the United States. OFAC would then require that mainstream tankers only lift Russian oil if a white-listed trader is handling the sale and providing the price attestation. This would put additional pressure on Russia to sell its oil through white-listed traders when using mainstream vessels.
As another maximum pressure option, the United States could borrow an idea from the sanctions regime on Iran. One of its most aggressive features was the demand, originally in legislation, that Iran’s oil customers reduce their purchases every six months, backed up by the threat of severe financial sanctions, including against the purchasing country’s central banks. The United States could introduce a similar regime against Russian oil sales, keeping in mind the need not to risk a spike in global oil prices by forcing too much Russian oil off the market and, hopefully, in coordination with other oil producers, such as Saudi Arabia.
To help with all this, the Trump administration should significantly scale up executive branch staffing on sanctions monitoring, targeting, and enforcement through a reallocation of existing personnel or external hires. Additionally, the administration should foster public-private partnerships with commercial satellite imaging companies to allow the United States’ academic and expert communities to build on US government capacity to track and identify Russia’s shadow fleet. Moreover, these vessels should be designated under existing sanctions authorities.
The White House need not act alone here—statutorily mandated sanctions always send a stronger message than executive orders. Therefore, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Banking Committee can play a big role in showing an all-of-government pressure campaign is in the offing against the Kremlin. Senator Lindsey Graham’s proposed “bone-breaking” Russia sanctions package is one of many strong signals that demonstrate that Congress is willing to strengthen the US push for a sustainable peace in Ukraine. Furthermore, the White House should capitalize on some European leaders’ warming attitude toward increasing Russia sanctions as well as seizing and using frozen Russian central bank assets to support Ukraine’s ability, even after a cease-fire, to rebuild and rearm in the face of what is likely to be sustained Russian pressure regardless of an agreement to halt fighting in Ukraine.
In other words, by wielding the sanctions sticks the White House, Congress, and European allies already hold, the Trump administration can bolster Ukrainian military resolve and its own policy of seeking an end to the war on favorable terms.