US is the real loser if Senate passes virtue signaling Russia sanctions

US is the real loser if Senate passes virtue signaling Russia sanctions As the Senate returns to Washington for its last week in session until mid-September, it faces a long to-do list. But for many senators, the top priority is not enacting legislation that will help Americans but instead rushing to approve the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act of 2026 (congress.gov › text), known colloquially as the “Russia sanctions bill.”A passion project of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham, the bill is intended to increase economic pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin. The legislation’s backers hope that, by choking off funding for Russia’s war effort, they can force Moscow to make greater concessions in ongoing negotiations to end the four-year old conflict in Ukraine. But this logic and the bill itself are fundamentally flawed. The new legislation will have a limited effect on Russia’s fortunes; as has been the case since the beginning (responsiblestatecraft.org › russia sanctions) of the war, additional economic punishments are unlikely to be decisive in Putin’s calculus. In fact, the bill is more likely to harden the Russian position than to soften it. The bill contains three main types of provisions. First, it codifies and expands sanctions (nytimes.com › senators russia sanctions bill graham) against Kremlin officials, Russian oligarchs, and Russian banks and corporations. Second, it cracks down on Russia’s shadow fleet (newsnationnow.com), increasing penalties against tankers and companies accused of trying to smuggle oil or evade the Western price cap on Russian oil sales. Third and most significantly, it grants the president the authority to impose (time.com) up to 100% tariffs on the top five buyers of Russian oil and natural gas, though it exempts allies who are reducing their purchases from Russia over time. The bill also allows the president to waive required penalties if deemed important for U.S. national security. To be sure, if the new bill is passed by Congress and implemented by the White House, it will be economically painful for Russia. The sanctions it prescribes would (docs.google.com › edit) fully sever Russian banks and energy corporations from the SWIFT system, including Gazprombank, which handles energy transactions. The bill also threatens secondary sanctions and loss of access to SWIFT for third-party intermediaries that continue to process payments from or interact with sanctioned entities. Combined with the bill’s measures aimed at Russia’s shadow fleet, these new sanctions will further complicate any Russian efforts to export oil.However, after more than four years of sanctions, Russian banks and corporations have already developed alternatives. For example, they can turn to small regional banks (rferl.org) that have little exposure to U.S. markets (osw.waw.pl). They can also rely on layered shell companies that work through friendly countries, transactions conducted through “stablecoin (trmlabs.com)” digital currencies, and even direct country-to-country bartering (reuters.com) in which Russian commodities are swapped for machinery, microelectronics, or other goods. None of these approaches is convenient, but they will allow Russia to weather even th