Russian President Vladimir Putin regularly claims that Western sanctions have been a catalyst for positive change in the Russian economy, and that Western officials won’t want to lift them anytime soon. But that hasn’t stopped Russian officials from demanding sanctions relief as part of a deal to normalize relations between the United States and Russia.
The current rapprochement between Moscow and Washington means that demand is not as far-fetched as it might once have seemed. However, while U.S. President Donald Trump has said publicly that sanctions against Russia could be lifted, it would not actually be in his interest to get rid of them entirely. Indeed, it’s to Trump’s advantage to have both carrots and sticks available in his ongoing negotiations with Russia over the Ukraine war.
Russian officials have made no secret of wanting all Western sanctions to be lifted at the same time—up to and including the 2012 Magnitsky Act. And they are not interested in a temporary freeze, which would be politically and technically more straightforward.
The Kremlin remembers only too well the Jackson-Vanik amendment to the U.S. Trade Act of 1974 that limited economic ties with the Soviet Union in response to Soviet restrictions on Jewish emigration. Even though Jackson-Vanik was suspended in 1989, it was used by the United States as a reason to block Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization until it was finally repealed in 2012.
However, while all the current U.S. sanctions against Russia were imposed via executive orders issued by the president or a federal ministry, Trump cannot lift them unilaterally, even if he wanted to. While the president is responsible for some aspects of U.S. foreign policy, Congress is in charge of regulating foreign commerce, which means that both branches of government have a say over economic sanctions.
The usual process for implementing sanctions is for Congress to pass a law that delegates the issue to the president, who in turn issues them formally. Ministries—usually the State Department, Treasury, or Department of Commerce—oversee compliance.
In the case of Russia, the legal framework for most U.S. sanctions is based on two laws: one passed in 1976; the other in 1977. President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14024 issued on 15 April 2021 was the framework for the most damaging Russia sanctions, and drew on the 1977 law that gave the president the right to impose restrictions in moments of “national emergency.” Executive Order 14024 also included scope for secondary sanctions, which are used to target foreign individuals and companies doing business with Russian entities.
The “national emergency” declaration required for these Biden sanctions must be extended by the president every year (in April). The same is true for the “national emergency” declared by President Barack Obama when he imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 in response to the annexation of Crimea. Tellingly, Trump extended that “national emergency” in early March 2025.
A second group of U.S. sanctions on Russia falls under the 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which codified many Obama-era restrictions by giving them the status of laws (rather than executive orders that are easily rescinded). These sanctions range from those on dual-use goods, as well as those on individuals deemed responsible for undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity. The outgoing Biden administration also used CAATSA to sanction major Russian companies, including defense conglomerate Rostec, state-owned banks Sberbank and Gazprombank, ship-builder Zvezda, and the Moscow Exchange.
The nature of CAATSA means that if Trump wants to get rid of it, he will have to persuade Congress that the act is no longer in the U.S. national security interest. And at least for the moment, many in Congress are skeptical about the possibility of a peace deal in Ukraine—and have even threatened Moscow with yet more sanctions if it does not engage in good faith negotiations.
All of this means that there are actually only a few sanctions against Russia that Trump could lift on his own. However, those limitations could also work to his advantage: he can always blame Congress for not being able to give Moscow what it wants. Retaining some sanctions means Washington will be able to use them as a bargaining chip in future negotiations.
From the Kremlin’s point of view, it would be particularly useful to regain access to international capital markets (not least because of the high cost of domestic borrowing). Opening up the Russian market to foreigners would also help dampen inflation. But it’s not just Trump and Congress who make the decisions here: sanctions imposed by the European Union, United Kingdom, and Switzerland remain in place, meaning bankers and fund managers are likely to remain extremely cautious of doing business with Russia.
More likely than not, if discussions about sanctions relief do take a more serious turn, then Moscow and Washington will opt to start with baby steps, such as removing sanctions from a few Russian banks and allowing them to open correspondent accounts in the United States.
When it comes to trade, Russia would most like to see the United States lift sanctions on imports of aircraft, aircraft parts, machinery, and equipment for transport and power generation. Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russians have figured out how to bypass the restrictions and obtain microchips, which are essential for the defense industry. But such sanctions workarounds have proved to be complicated and expensive. Equipment wear and tear and the difficulties of obtaining replacement parts continue to cause serious problems for Russian civil aviation, the transport sector, and manufacturers.
Finally, there are also U.S. sanctions against individual Russians. The hypothetic removal—or not—of these restrictions is likely to provoke plenty of behind-the-scenes squabbling. On the one hand, many would like to get sanctions removed to be able to travel to the United States and access their assets. On the other hand, being sanctioned has become a badge of honor and loyalty within the Russian establishment—and being the first to lose that badge would likely entail political risks. The most likely scenario, therefore, is that the first people to have personal sanctions lifted will be figures whose loyalty to the Kremlin is beyond any doubt.
Either way, discussions about removing sanctions are likely to be long and complex. Not only is it unclear whether Putin is prepared to step back from his maximalist demands for full sanctions relief, it’s also an open question whether Trump is willing to engage in energy-sapping negotiations and give up on the prospect of solving everything in one fell swoop.
