Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump arrive for a press conference in Anchorage, Alaska on August 15, 2025. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images Moscow —

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

See Full Page