Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S. Olga Stefanishyna reacts to Putin’s rejection of Zelenskyy’s peace talk offer. She discusses the importance of continued U.S. support, Russia’s war losses and the need for Ukraine to scale up its defense capabilities.

A sanctioned Russian LNG tanker from the Portovaya project idled near Singapore in May 2026 with no buyer. At the same time, Ukrainian drones had already knocked roughly 700,000 barrels per day of Russian refining capacity offline across 16 major facilities. Europe had locked in a binding legal phase-out of Russian gas. And just four months earlier, U.S. forces had capturedNicolás Maduroin Venezuela.

These are not isolated events, but connected parts of a strategic vise squeezing Russian power.

For more than a decade, Russia converted energy into leverage through access. Pipelines and long-term contracts gave Moscow influence inside European utilities and governments. Discounted crude layered on top of defense ties gave it relevance in India. Fuel networks helped keep clients like Venezuela and Cuba in the anti-Western column. The physical molecule mattered less than the political dependence it created. That conversion system is now being attacked on multiple fronts at once.

Russian-flagged oil tanker Anatoly Kolodkin arrives in Matanzas, Cuba, Tuesday, March 31, 2026.(Ramon Espinosa/AP Photo)

Trump moved early on buyers. In August 2025 he signed an executive order imposing additional 25%tariffs on India over itsRussian oil purchases, pushing combined rates as high as 50% in some categories. He later stated publicly that Indian Prime Minister Modi had assured him India would stop buying Russian oil and that China would be next.

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The signal was clear: Continued large-scale purchases carried direct economic costs. India has not abandoned Russian crude entirely, but it has become selective. The May 2026 rejection of the Portovaya LNG cargo showed the limit. Even with energy markets tight from the Iran war, Indian firms treated certain sanctioned Russian cargoes as carrying unacceptable compliance risk.

來源：福斯新聞