The US Senate passed the “sanctions from hell” package advanced by the late Senator Lindsey Graham on July 29 with an overwhelming majority of 86 to 12 in favour, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in attendance.

Zelenskiy was in Washington to visit US President Donald Trump to consolidate on rapidly improving relations between the US and Ukraine after the low water mark of their “you’ve got no cards” clash with Trump in the Oval office in February. Reportedly, Trump has been impressed by Ukraine’s progress on the battlefield this year, and prowess with drone war tactics and technology, after being humbled by the same weapons in his own war in Iran.

The Ukrainian president was in the capital along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the occasion of Graham’s funeral, who died unexpectedly last week. Graham was one of Ukraine’s biggest advocates in the US government and proposed crushing sanctions that would have imposed 500% tariffs on any country that trades with Russia – especially the sanctions are designed to punish China and India in particular which remain big buyers of Russian oil.

The final package was watered down, reducing the tariff rate to 100% and giving Trump unprecedented powers to impose and remove the tariff regime.

Trump said he would support the bill, but asked that sanctions on Iran be added, as the Iran war enters its sixth month with little progress made.

Zelenskiy said the new ​sanctions legislation would hit Russia's ability to ⁠finance the war and send a “powerful signal” about renewed US support for the Ukrainian people.

"It's also a big signal to Europe, big signal to Ukraine, big support of our people, so I'm very thankful," Zelenskiy told reporters before heading into the Senate chamber before the vote ​on what has been renamed the "Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026."

“Today in Washington, we had a major meeting with representatives of both parties in the Senate – more than 60 senators were present. Thank you for this support and for your high assessment of the results of our warriors on the front lines and Ukraine’s ability to respond justly to Russia for its strikes against our people,” Zelenskiy said in a post on social media. “We discussed many issues, first and foremost, anti-ballistic defence. Thank you for your readiness to help.”

After the vote a bipartisan statement said the passage of the bill would stop foreign ⁠purchases of Russian oil and gas revenue from fuelling Russian President Vladimir Putin's "war machine" as well as restrict "the Iranian regime’s ability to support terrorism and build its nuclear program," Reuters reports.

What’s in the bill

The increase in tariffs, which have been transformed into a political weapon by the Trump administration, has concerned economists as they push up inflation at home, say Democratic lawmakers, who are also unhappy about the expanded powers the bill hands the president.

“Congress must stop outsourcing responsibility for ‌trade and ⁠tariffs to a runaway executive who is more interested in consolidating his own power than in the welfare of the American people,” Democrats said in a statement, cited by Reuters.

There is no mechanism for congressional ​disapproval of any tariffs, and the ​authority for the president never ⁠expires, according to Democrats, who pointed out that the bill gives Trump complete authority to use the bill as a weapon to threaten allies like Europe and Japan as well, beyond the control or oversight of Congress.

The bill also in effect makes it possible to sanction any ship, company or insurer assisting Russian oil exports, without the need for separate legislation or evaluation process, with no right of appeal. That would allow the US to seize ships under the authority of the new bill without warning of an official announcement of being added to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) Lists.

While the bill doesn’t name any countries, the top five buyers of Russian crude are China, India, Slovakia, Hungary and Azerbaijan, and the top importers of Russian natural gas are China, ​France, Japan, Hungary and Belgium. Another point of contention is in theory the US would have to impose 100% tariffs on Europe which remains addicted to Russian gas imports as it races to refill its underground storage tanks ahead of the heating season or face a new gas crisis.

However, a calve out has been built into the bill for US allies, with exceptions for countries that import less than 15% of Russia's natural gas and take “significant steps” to reduce those imports. Aides said that would provide an exemption for Japan, France, Hungary and Belgium, Reuters reports. The EU is planning to ban imports of Russian gas completely by January 1, although analysts question the feasibility of the plan due to the end of Persian LNG exports due to the war in the Gulf.

As IntelliNews has reported, the sanctions regime on Russia has largely failed to produce its desired result: bring Russia’s economy to its knees and force Putin to cut a deal. The boomerang effect means that they have inflicted more pain on Europe than on Russia which is now rapidly deindustrialising and the effort has been undermined by lobbying by EU member states to protect their own commercial interests. A Greek veto forced the European Commission (EC) to water down the latest 21^st sanctions package to exclude Greek tankers from the restrictions, which make up a fifth of Russia’s shadow fleet. Other EU lobbies also blocked the inclusion of fish, sable pelts and a full ban on the imports of aluminium and diamonds.

The sanctions have hurt the US economy less as it has little trade with Russia but it is still totally dependent on Russian highly enriched uranium as fuel for its nuclear power stations and has also introduced a calve out that runs until 2028. The new Graman bill is designed to close loopholes that have meant until now oil sanctions have been largely ineffective; Russia earned $160bn from oil exports last year – enough to almost cover its entire military spending bill in that year.

Despite the misgivings with the bill, Democrats largely joined the vote to approve the bill in an unusual bipartisan decision. About half a dozen fence-sitters were persuaded to vote “Yea” after meeting personally with Zelenskiy in the Capitol before the vote.

 The 12 senators who voted against advancing the bill were: Rand Paul: Bernie Sanders: Elizabeth Warren: Lisa Blunt Rochester: Maggie Hassan: Mazie Hirono: Andy Kim: Ed Markey: Jon Ossoff: Alex Padilla: Peter Welch: and Ron Wyden​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​.

“All of these Senators should be shamed. Why would they want Russia to get off easy when Russia is assisting Iran with killing US soldiers and they are slaughtering innocent civilians with ballistic missiles in Ukraine?” Laura Looner, a Trump advisor, said in a post on social media, who has just returned from a high profile trip to Kyiv.

Relations in flux

Netanyahu was also in town to try and persuade that the Iran nuclear threat remains real.

According to aides he declined to meet Zelenskiy during the Washington visit, Haaretz sources say. Israeli support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia has been lukewarm, as Tel Aviv maintains cordial relations with the Kremlin, partly thanks to its large Russian minority, and has sat on the fence during most of the last four and half years.

A Ukrainian source said Netanyahu's office initially proposed the meeting but later said the prime minister's schedule was too tight; Trump supporters fear Israel and Ukraine are exacerbating the US role in global conflicts against Iran and Russia, Haaretz reports.

The Washington trip was a diplomatic coup for Bankova, Ukraine’s presidential administration, undoing much of the damage done at the start of this year. Trump has been brought round by Ukraine’s “turning point” progress narrative on the battlefield that was relentlessly pushed by Bankova and the mainstream media ahead of the Ankara Nato summit on July 8.

"Now, the initiative is not in the hands of Putin," Zelensky said in an interview with Fox News following his White House meeting on July 28.

However, as IntelliNews reported, the situation on in Donbas is going less well as the Armed Forces of Russia (AFR) have nearly recaptured the key Donbas “fortress city” of Kostiantynivka and are now advancing on the other two cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

The White House has now effectively withdrawn from the efforts to broker a ceasefire deal and has signed up to Bankova and Brussel’s strategy of “increasing the pressure” and forcing Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table after much progress was made last year culminating in the Moscow meeting on December 3 with Putin where the framework of a 27-point peace plan (27PPP) was agreed.

“The whole program here is to bring Putin to the negotiating table,” Senator Mike Rounds said following a meeting with the Ukrainian president as cited by Politico. “Zelenskiy believed that Putin would think a little bit more about trying to negotiate a settlement if the sanctions were in place and actually creating more irritation and, as he put it, I believe, ‘anger’ with the war with the Russian people.”

Putin warned his generals on July 28 to prepare for a three-year war and Zelenskiy has also been preparing for at least two more years of war after securing a €90bn EU loan to pay for it. During the Nato summit, Zelenskiy said the war has “gone into the air” as a brutal tit-for-tat missile war is rapidly escalating that is targeting civilian assets such as supermarkets, petrol stations and port infrastructure. Ukraine has largely destroyed the Wildberries’ warehouses through which just under 9% of Russia’s entire retail sales pass, while Russia has stepped up its bombing of the Odesa port which handles 90% of Ukraine’s seaborne exports in just the last week.

Still, the Trump administration support for Ukraine remains largely symbolic. While the new Graham sanctions will cause Russia more headaches, it will continue to sell its oil and China at least will do its best to ignore them on principle. However, down to the dregs of interceptor missiles, Ukraine’s skies are increasingly open to Russia’s large stockpile of ballistic missiles that can only be brought down by US PAC-3 interceptor missiles and there was no word from Trump that he would make more air defence ammo available to Ukraine. During the Nato summit Trump surprised by granting Ukraine a license to make Patriot missiles, but those factors won’t come online for at least a year – if then.

Zelenskiy said that he had a “good talk” with Trump on the topic of Patriot missiles, but as anticipated, nothing concrete was announced, other than to “intensify the negotiation process at all levels,” according to a Zelenskiy aide, cited by Politico.

“Of course, I shared what we need, our needs. I shared it with the president today. I was thankful to him for this meeting, and now I shared with senators,” Zelenskiy told reporters. “So, we will try to manage it. It’s a big, big challenge.”

Zelenskiy also reportedly met with representatives from Lockheed Martin Corp., which produces missiles for the Patriot defences, adding in a post on social media that his team was, “already working on specific solutions to move to co-production as quickly as possible.” Last week, Zelenskiy also met with a team from Raytheon, which is a contractor for the overall Patriot system.

In the meantime, Bankova is anticipating a repeat of Putin’s attempt to freeze Ukraine into submission by bombing what remains of Ukraine’s power generation capacity. Prewar Ukraine had just under 60GW of generating capacity; now it has 14GW left, according to IntelliNews calculations.