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The late, great U.S. Sen. Everett Dirksen, R–Ill., famously said: “When I feel the heat, I see the light.” It’s high time that Russian President Vladimir Putin similarly yielded to public pressure. President Donald Trump is just the man to turn Putin’s people against him. Trump on Oct. 22 slapped fresh sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil. Russia’s two largest energy companies, respectively, produce 40% and 15% of that country’s petroleum production. The previous day, Trump scotched a summit with Putin in Budapest. Trump told journalists that such a meeting “didn’t feel right to me.” Yes, Mr. President. Here’s what doesn’t “feel right”: Despite Western sanctions, Moscow has swaddled its citizens with subsidies and wartime spending. For many Russians, daily life has grown more comfortable, not less, since Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022. As he keeps steering Moscow and Kyiv towards peace, Trump should pursue this truth: Only strength and inconvenience change Putin’s behavior. Indeed, the time is now for Trump to position Russians to inflict pain on their president. Energy and the Economics of Pain Ambassador Bruce Chapman, who led America’s United Nations Mission in Vienna under President Ronald Reagan, once confided that even a minor uptick in European heating costs would be “seen as a political disaster.” Understandable—but fatal. Putin counts on the West’s fear of short-term discomfort. He knows that a democracy addicted to cheap gas tends to blink first. Yet the U.S., now the world’s largest oil producer, can absorb that cost and weaponize energy against the Kremlin, as Trump just did. The path to peace runs not through price caps but through economic pressure that bites. In this case, Russians must sink their teeth into Putin. A War Economy Without Prices Russia does not operate a normal market economy. Labor, materials, energy, and even conscience are effectively free of charge. Chapman described today’s tragic absurdity: “The irony of Orthodox babushkas assembling Islamic Shahed drones from Siberian plywood in Soviet-era factories, blessed by Russian Orthodox priests, to deliver payloads upon the heads of sleeping Ukrainian Orthodox children – that captures the morals of Putin’s Russia.” The Russian model that Trump must defeat seamlessly fuses tyranny, theology, luxury, and terror. It cannot be defeated at the bargaining table. It must be dismantled: Russia’s globe-trotting general population must lose their technology, cash, and access to the Free World’s creature comforts. Only then will they aim their disdain towards Putin, withdraw their popular support, and pressure him to let them enjoy the West’s pleasures, once again. Sanctions That Are Felt, Not Filed Squeezing Russian oil companies is a worthy tactic. “Since Russia started rattling sabers before its second invasion of Ukraine, I have called for debilitating sanctions on Moscow. President Trump’s most recent sanctions on the leading Russian oil companies are a step in the right direction,” Trump 45’s national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien told us. “Until now, the Biden administration and the EU had taken a ‘slap on the wrist’ approach to sanctions, which has had almost zero effect on changing Russia’s behavior,” O’Brien continued. “If Russia does not cease its aggression against Ukraine, the next step is to sanction the Russian Federation Central Bank and kick Russia out of the SWIFT system. These actions significantly will weaken the Russian economy and population and impose real costs on Russia for continuing to prosecute this war.” Here is another promising approach: Deny Russians the good life. Americans assume that only wealthy Russians journey abroad. In fact, those in the lower-middle class and up enjoy the outside world—from Europe to the Americas. As one Spanish businessman recently observed: “These days, the streets of Mallorca sound like Moscow’s suburbs.” Today’s middle-class Russians make the Soviet Union’s fabled Nomenklatura resemble the lumpenproletariat. In Milan’s airports, luxury brands advertise in Russian. In Miami, Russian tourists rent convertibles and smile for Instagram. Muscovites hike the Grand Canyon and stroll the sands of Key West. The missiles that Putin lobs on Kharkiv and Lviv are invisible to the Russians who savor America the Beautiful. Likewise for the Russians who enjoy mornings in the Alps, afternoons in Paris’ boutiques, and evenings among the theaters of London’s West End. Severing the Lifestyle Lifeline The West, therefore, should deny the Kremlin’s supporters—currently a majority of Russians— the very privileges that they crave: travel, luxury, and liquidity. Let the Russians who bankroll Putin’s War on Ukraine shop in Beijing and vacation in Pyongyang. Let their lawyers, bankers, and art dealers shiver under secondary sanctions. The Kremlin deserves grave Western consequences for its relentless battering of Ukraine. America and its allies should immediately slap 1,000% tariffs on countries that purchase Russian goods. (Taiwan alone bought $5 billion of Russian naphtha—for microchip production—during this war, effectively bankrolling Moscow’s entire production of Shahed drones launched against Kiev). The West also must deny Russian passport holders new or existing tourist, business, and student visas and deport any such Russians now in America, Australia, Canada, the European Union, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Trump has the legal power to execute this policy domestically and the political power to persuade foreign leaders to do so internationally. It makes zero sense to send Ukraine weapons and money to repel Putin’s daily attacks while feting Russians in luxury hotels, selling them wine, spraying them with perfume, measuring them for bespoke attire, and then handing Moscow cash for oil and petrochemicals. The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control should seize every available Putin-linked possession in the West, plenty of which hide in plain sight. This swiftly will aggravate Putin’s middle-class supporters and Russia’s ruling class—lawyers, bankers, brokers, and their children, spouses, and mistresses. Those at or near Russia’s commanding heights will tumble from annoyance to anger as their cashflow, travel plans, and glamorous lifestyles evaporate before their eyes. “In regimes like this one, courtiers, oligarchs, senior bureaucrats, and businesspeople get ahead by currying favor with the dictator or the ruling party,” said John Lenczowski, founder and chancellor of the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C., and Reagan’s principal adviser on Soviet affairs. “The imposition of an increasing number of sanctions that will make even the courtiers’ lives miserable may prompt people to say ‘enough!’” He added: “I believe that people will eventually peel away from the regime.” Russian permanent residents and Green Card holders may remain in the West. But their status must carry obligations: Those who return to live in Russia, spend significant time there, or reactivate ties to the regime should face expedited re-entry review and potential revocation of their Green Cards. The West is at war with a government that weaponizes its economy and people. America and its allies, in turn, must make Russians choose either complicity with the Kremlin or the comforts of the West. The Free World should make that choice clear, public, and enforceable. And as Russia’s elite stew in their dachas rather than savor lavish weekends in South Beach, they will direct their frustration at Putin and demand that he end the war that has transformed them into global pariahs. That’s why Moscow’s path to peace runs through Miami. We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
