US Senate Passes Russia Sanctions Bill, Tariffs Up to 100%
The bill named for the late Senator Lindsey Graham passed 86 to 11, giving the White House power to impose tariffs of up to 100 percent on buyers of Russian oil and gas.
The United States Senate passed a bill on Friday, August 7, 2026, by a vote of 86 to 11, imposing sanctions on Russia and Iran and giving the US president authority to charge tariffs of up to 100 percent on countries that buy Russian oil and gas. For Serbia, whose gas supply depends on imports from Russia, the threshold written into the law itself matters most: countries that import less than 15 percent of their natural gas from Russia, and that are taking measurable steps to cut that share further, are exempt.
The bill’s full name is the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, after Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who spent years pushing for tougher measures against Moscow and died on July 11, 2026. The day before his death, just back from Kyiv, Graham joined a bipartisan group of senators in announcing that a deal had been reached with the White House on a new version of the bill. Earlier drafts had come close to a vote more than once, only to stall against resistance from Donald Trump’s administration or slip down the list of priorities.
Who the 100 percent tariffs target
The tariff authority applies to the largest buyers of Russian energy, and officials estimate it would cover at least the five biggest importers of Russian fuel, including China and India. According to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, those two countries are the largest buyers of Russian crude oil. Europe was historically the top buyer of Russian natural gas, but the European Union has sharply cut its imports and aims to eliminate them entirely by next year.
The sanctions section of the bill reaches further than the tariffs. Primary and secondary measures target:
- Vladimir Putin and officials in his government
- oligarchs and their family members
- Russian banks and financial institutions
- the so called shadow fleet and the maritime infrastructure Russia uses to dodge Western embargoes
At Trump’s insistence, the text also expands sanctions to cover Iran’s energy and weapons sectors, with a clause letting the president suspend the measures if he certifies to Congress that doing so serves the US national interest.
Jim Risch, the Republican senator who leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spoke on the floor before the vote.
This could finally bring Russia to the negotiating table and end the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who steered the bill alongside Graham, called the day historic and shared some of the last words his late colleague sent him.
This is a damn big deal.
Why the House vote won’t be a formality
The bill now moves to the House of Representatives, which is on a five week recess through August, so a vote is not expected before early September at the earliest. The pushback comes from Democrats who object not to the sanctions but to the tariffs. Representatives Gregory Meeks and Don Beyer called the text as passed unacceptable, arguing that the president already has legal authority to sanction Russia and simply hasn’t used it, while the bill hands him sweeping new tariff powers on top of that.
In the Senate, Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky tried to fix that same objection with an amendment that would have stripped the tariff authority out of the bill. It failed. Democrat Raphael Warnock of Georgia dropped his opposition after getting a written assurance from the US Trade Representative limiting how that authority could be used.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcomed the bill’s passage and said the goal now is to jointly cut off the funds Russia uses to finance the war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who watched a procedural vote on the same bill from the Senate gallery in late June, thanked both parties and the American people as a whole. The Russian embassy in Washington had earlier warned that punishing Russia and its trading partners, on the eve of an energy crisis and rising gas prices ahead of the US midterm elections, would be deeply counterproductive.
For the region, the mechanism matters more than the list of names. The 15 percent threshold was built as a test measured by import statistics and proven reduction rather than political statements, and it will kick in just as Brussels finishes phasing out its own ban on Russian gas. Serbia is not among the five largest buyers of Russian oil and is not a direct tariff target, but it sits in a neighborhood that will have to meet that threshold. The next date to watch is early September, when the House returns from recess.
