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US Treasury Chief: Putin Was Never Negotiating in Good Faith—That’s Why We Hit Russia With Massive Sanctions

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Photo of Vlad Litnarovych
Vlad Litnarovych
News Writer
Scott Bessent, US Treasury Secretary, during the Federal Reserve Board Community Bank Conference in Washington, DC, US, on October 9, 2025. (Source: Getty Images)
Scott Bessent, US Treasury Secretary, during the Federal Reserve Board Community Bank Conference in Washington, DC, US, on October 9, 2025. (Source: Getty Images)

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that Washington’s sweeping new sanctions against Russia’s oil giants were imposed because “Putin lied” about wanting peace in Ukraine, according to Fox Business on October 22.

Bessent told Fox the move marks “one of the largest sanctions packages we’ve ever done against the Russian Federation,” citing Moscow’s lack of honest engagement in efforts to end the war.

“President Putin has not come to the table in an honest and forthright manner, as we’d hoped,” Bessent said. “President Trump is disappointed at where we are in these talks.”

The Treasury Department formally blacklisted Rosneft and Lukoil, freezing all of their assets in the United States and barring any American entity from doing business with them.

The measure, Bessent said, aims to choke off the Kremlin’s key source of war funding.

“Given President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine,” Bessent said in a statement.

The announcement followed President Donald Trump’s decision to halt a planned meeting with Putin in Budapest, saying he didn’t want a “wasted” summit.

Still, the Kremlin appeared to keep the door open, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov telling reporters that “no one wants to waste time, neither President Trump nor President Putin.”

In its statement, the Treasury said the United States “will continue to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the war,” adding that “a permanent peace depends entirely on Russia’s willingness to negotiate in good faith.”

Earlier, reports emerged that following the cancellation of the planned summit between Russian leader Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump, a group of US senators had introduced three new bipartisan bills aimed at ramping up pressure on Moscow.

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