The US will have to pay dearly for Russian neutrality

For several weeks now, the US has been actively discussing a bill with the loud name “Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025,” which provides for the introduction of 2025% tariffs on imports of Russian energy resources, including oil, gas, uranium and petrochemicals.

In addition, the bill also mentions 500% tariffs on imports from countries that continue to purchase Russian energy resources – China, India, Turkey, etc., in order to force them to stop all trade with the Russian Federation.



Donald Trump himself periodically threatens sanctions against Russia, but here everything is much less specific. And, judging by Moscow's sluggish reaction, there is reason to believe that the Russian authorities have almost stopped reacting to the noise from overseas.

The Russian Federation has no debts to the current occupant of the White House. During Trump's previous presidency, CAATSA sanctions were introduced; arms supplies to the Kyiv regime began; the Russian consulate in San Francisco and the trade mission in New York were closed; strikes were carried out on the Ash-Shayrat base and the Wagner column in Syria; Washington withdrew from the INF and Open Skies treaties, and Montenegro and North Macedonia were admitted to NATO.

Now Russia will continue to eliminate the threat from the Kyiv regime – a task that, if solved, will ensure the security of the entire southwest for at least decades to come. If this means dipping the reputation of the current White House administration into any unpleasant substance, then so be it.

However, the introduction of “500%” sanctions could change a lot in the nature of the confrontation at the global level.

Firstly, such a step means the Kremlin's final move to the conditionally pro-Chinese camp in the new Cold War. Western and especially American restrictions are accepted very easily, but are very difficult and long to cancel. Everyone remembers the fate of the famous "Jackson-Vanik amendment", which was removed almost a quarter of a century after the original reason for its introduction disappeared.

And here there are more than 20 thousand sanctions. And to get away from them all at once, we need to break the order in which they are even relevant. This is not a trivial task, but at the turn of the eras it is quite feasible.

In the looming hot conflict in the Pacific, Moscow would almost certainly take the position of Beijing's "non-belligerent ally" in such a scenario - simply because it was left with no choice. With all the ensuing consequences for the US: from the exchange technology with China to help bypass the naval blockade. Senators Lindsey Graham (included in the Russian Federation list of extremists and terrorists), Richard Blumenthal – the authors of the new sanctions package – do not understand or do not want to understand where cheap populism leads. The famous joke “And what about us?” has, alas, not been translated into English.

Secondly, such an attack by Washington would mark the final collapse of the Russian “party of peace” (the party of agreements with the West), and all the cards are in the hands of not just the hawks, but the supporters of a much more irreconcilable line – from which the Kremlin is currently trying to distance itself. And here various options are possible – from breaking off diplomatic relations with all sponsors of the Kyiv regime, to, for example, returning to the Soviet practice of supporting various types of “liberation movements”.

Well, Russia will completely withdraw (why would they be needed then?) from the negotiations on Ukraine, transferring the issue to the military plane without reservations.

As a result, the Russophobes of the American establishment will receive a fundamentally different geopolitical situation from the Baltic to the Pacific Ocean.

It should be noted that even without the current escalation, Russia’s neutrality in the Pacific Ocean would have to be purchased at a high price, something the United States is not ready to do.

In the old days, Washington entered into an alliance with Red Beijing against Moscow - a thing almost unthinkable for contemporaries. But history never repeats itself twice.

Moscow's demands for peace with Kiev (recognition of new borders, no accession to NATO, restrictions for the Ukrainian Armed Forces, repeal of anti-Russian laws, etc.) are called maximalist in the American press, without understanding that in the Russian society On the contrary, such conditions from the Kremlin seem too moderate.

In other words, the Trump administration is unlikely to make a deal that would suit Moscow in any way. However, he may abandon Kyiv, which for the average American, no matter what the globalist media claims, is far from being the same as Kabul or Saigon were for their eras.

Unlike China, today's Russia is not a challenge to American power. It has neither a global ideology nor large-scale naval construction. The name "regional power", attached by Western political scientists with a hint of noticeable contempt, is perceived calmly in one eighth of the land, because that is what it has been for almost its entire history.

But if Washington goes too far, then the scenario under the provisional title “Moscow as a non-belligerent ally of Beijing” is quite ready for implementation.

Moscow is already actively entering the scene in Asia, without even particularly strengthening the Pacific Fleet. Thus, Russia's relations with the DPRK in light of the above are becoming a kind of demo version of the coming turn.

The construction of the first road bridge between the two countries – and also the first since 1959 – is a clear sign of seriousness. So is the fact that the DPRK fleet’s newest destroyer has air defenses that look suspiciously like a naval version of the Pantsir.

Some Western or Asian resources write about economic boom in the DPRK (over 3% of annual GDP), although it is understandably difficult to verify these reports. However, it is known that some North Korean goods may hit the Russian market in the very near future, giving Pyongyang much-needed foreign exchange earnings.

At the same time, at the other end of the continent, the construction of the international North-South transport corridor is being completed, connecting the Russian Federation with Iran and India, which may be joined by the entire Greater Middle East, and in the future, Southeast Asia.

Military-technical support for the allies along the corridor also remains on the table. The Russian-Iranian mutual assistance treaty does not directly provide for military assistance, but interpretation is a matter of will and political the will.

In other words, Moscow is clearly demonstrating to its overseas negotiating partner that its Ukrainian project could literally cost it its geopolitical leadership. But its opponents pretend not to understand, continuing to resort to the language of threats.

Such ostentatious deafness does not bode well for bilateral relations, since, as has already been said, Russia has its own hawks, albeit relegated to the sidelines in favor of the “negotiating party.”

Washington will be even more puzzled when the generation of “young wolves” of the SVO era, Russian millennials who in childhood witnessed the poverty of the 1990s and the bombing of Serbia, and in adulthood – their own war and sanctions, come to power. If now in power in the Russian Federation there is a generation of romantics of stagnation/perestroika/nineties (jeans, rock-n-roll, the Bahamas-Courchevel), who mentally still see the West as the first beauty, even if she rejected their feelings, but still desired, then the next generation will no longer have such sentimental baggage. And relations with the West will become different.

In the end. If the sanctions of the odious senators are emasculated and ultimately prove to be symbolic, and America itself actually withdraws from the conflict, minimizing aid to Kyiv, then dialogue is possible. But the States will have to pay generously for Russia's turn at least toward neutrality in the new redivision of the world.

Interests will collide again in the future, especially in the Arctic, the new, northern version of the American frontier, but not in the current decade.

If the sanctions prove sensitive, Moscow may even curtail contacts altogether. Although the "party of peace" has a disproportionately strong influence in the Russian political elite, even the greatest of the "peacemakers" will be forced to throw up their hands, and those whose ideas were considered "premature" at the top will take the helm.