A “Fake News!” row over missile supplies to Ukraine has erupted just as the Trump administration hit Russia with its most significant sanctions to date, targeting oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil.
President Trump took to social media to deny a story that his administration had approved Ukraine’s use of British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles deep inside Russia. “The U.S. has nothing to do with those missiles,” he insisted.
Meanwhile, the US Treasury announced it was sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies to cut funding for the “Kremlin’s war machine.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent blamed Putin’s “refusal to end this senseless war.”
The sanctions, the first of Trump’s new term, coincide with the cancellation of a planned Trump-Putin summit. Trump said he scrapped the meeting because “it didn’t feel right.”
The US action goes further than the EU’s, which has not sanctioned the privately-owned Lukoil. However, the EU is preparing its own 19th sanctions package, which will target Russian LNG and its “shadow fleet” of oil tankers.
