WASHINGTON(National times)- President Donald Trump\u2019s administration announced Wednesday new \u201cmassive sanctions\u201d against Russia\u2019s oil industry that are aimed at moving Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table and bringing an end to Moscow\u2019s brutal war on Ukraine. The sanctions against oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil followed months of calls from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as well as bipartisan pressure on Trump to hit Russia with harder sanctions on its oil industry, the economic engine that has allowed Russia to continue to execute the grinding conflict even as it finds itself largely internationally isolated.\u201cHopefully he\u2019ll become reasonable,\u201d Trump said of Putin not long after the Treasury Department announced the sanctions against Russia\u2019s two biggest oil companies and their subsidiaries. \u201cAnd hopefully Zelenskyy will be reasonable, too. You know, it takes two to tango, as they say.\u201d The U.S. administration announced the sanctions as NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte was in Washington for talks with Trump. The military alliance has been coordinating deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, many of them purchased from the United States by Canada and European countries. reasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the new sanctions were a direct response to Moscow\u2019s refusal to end its \u201csenseless war\u201d and an attempt to choke off \u201cthe Kremlin\u2019s war machine.\u201d Bessent added that the Treasury Department was prepared to take further action if necessary to support Trump\u2019s effort to end the war. \u201cWe encourage our allies to join us in and adhere to these sanctions.\u201d The announcement came after Russian drones and missiles blasted sites across Ukraine, killing at least six people, including a woman and her two young daughters. The attack came in waves from Tuesday night into Wednesday and targeted at least eight Ukrainian cities, as well as a village in the region of the capital, Kyiv, where a strike set fire to a house in which the mother and her 6-month-old and 12-year-old daughters were staying, regional head Mykola Kalashnyk said. Russian drones also hit a kindergarten in Kharkiv, Ukraine\u2019s second-largest city, later Wednesday when children were in the building, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said. One person was killed and six were hurt, but no children were physically harmed, he said. Rutte, in his Oval Office appearance, went out of his way to underscore that the weaponry the U.S. is selling Europe to provide to Ukraine has been essential to helping stop many attacks like the one that ravaged the kindergarten. \u201cWe need to make sure that the air defense systems are in place, and we need the U.S. systems to do that, and the Europeans are paying for that,\u201d Rutte said. \u201cIt is exactly the type of actions we needed, and the President is doing that and trying everything to get this work done.\u201d Zelenskyy said many of the children were in shock. He said the attack targeted 10 separate regions: Kyiv, Odesa, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kirovohrad, Poltava, Vinnytsia, Zaporizhzhia, Cherkasy and Sumy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON(National times)- President Donald Trump\u2019s administration announced Wednesday new \u201cmassive sanctions\u201d against Russia\u2019s oil industry that are aimed at moving Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table and bringing an end to Moscow\u2019s brutal war on Ukraine. The sanctions against oil giants Rosneft and Lukoil followed months of calls from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":114396,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-114395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n