By Patricia Zengerle
WASHINGTON, Aug 7 (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate easily passed sweeping Russia sanctions legislation on Friday, advancing a long-delayed measure backed by late Senator Lindsey Graham and setting the stage for consideration by the House of Representatives within weeks.
Graham, a South Carolina Republican who died last month, was among Kyiv’s most outspoken allies in Congress in its four-year-long war with Russia, and the bill aims to increase economic pressure on Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine.
It also includes expanded sanctions on Iran sought by President Donald Trump as lawmakers moved to finally hold a vote on the measure well over a year since it was first introduced on April 1, 2025.
The Senate’s Republican leaders had not brought the bill up for a vote because of resistance from Trump, who had kept decisions on sanctions at the White House, not Congress, since starting his second term in January 2025.
The Senate voted 86-11 to pass the “Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026,” which would impose sanctions on Russian officials and authorize stiff tariffs on China, India and other countries to reduce their dependence on Russian oil and gas.
Broad support for tougher sanctions on Russia may not be enough to secure House passage, with some lawmakers wary that new tariff powers for Trump could raise costs for U.S. importers and consumers while exposing Republicans to political blowback.
SKEPTICISM IN THE HOUSE
Representatives Gregory Meeks of New York and Don Beyer of Virginia said in a statement they still had “fundamental concerns” about the tariff powers for Trump, who has made them a central piece of his “America First” approach to foreign policy.
“What the bill does grant … are sweeping new tariff authorities that the president could weaponize with abandon, as he has repeatedly done in the past,” said Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Beyer, the senior Democrat on the Joint Economic Committee.
Trump’s fellow Republicans control only slim majorities in both the House and Senate.
Only one Senate Republican, Rand Paul of Kentucky, voted against the bill. The chamber erupted into applause after the late senator’s sister, Darline Graham, who was appointed to fill his seat, read out the final tally.
Before passing the bill, the Senate rejected an amendment sponsored by Paul and Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon that would have removed the tariff powers.
Paul likened tariffs to taxes on American consumers.
“Increasing taxes on Americans will not end Putin’s war in Ukraine,” he said before the amendment vote.
If it is approved by the House and signed into law by Trump, the measure would allow the president to impose tariffs of up to 100% on countries that are major consumers of Russian energy, including India, Japan and some countries in the European Union, and leave it to his discretion to lift them.
The legislation’s backers insist that the tariffs are narrow enough that they would do their intended job of reducing Russian energy revenue that funds its war on Ukraine without negative consequences.
“These tariffs have one purpose, to make it more costly for countries to keep buying the Russian energy to fund Putin’s war,” said Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
BEST OPPORTUNITY?
Bill supporters said the agreement is the best opportunity to pass legislation to support Ukraine, and the strong bipartisan Senate vote provided momentum for it to pass the House after it returns from its summer recess on August 31.
Graham had announced shortly before his sudden death on July 11 that he and Trump agreed finally to move forward with the legislation.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in Washington for Graham’s funeral, watched an early procedural vote on the bill last week. He said the legislation would hit Russia’s ability to finance the war while sending a powerful signal about U.S. support for the Ukrainian people.
“It’s also a big signal to Europe, big signal to Ukraine, big support of our people, so I’m very thankful,” Zelenskiy told reporters at the time.
The legislation lets the president impose targeted tariffs on imported goods from countries that buy the vast majority of Russian oil or gas and enable Russia’s evasion of sanctions.
The bill limits these tariffs to the five largest importers of Russian crude oil or gas and the top five countries that aid Russia’s energy sanctions evasion. The measure includes a provision to prevent a lapse in sanctions authority that restricts funding for Iranian energy and weapons.
(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Howard Goller, Alistair Bell and Mark Porter)
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