Bart van Schuylenburg

The Trump administration is considering lifting sanctions on Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Russian Direct Investment Fund, according to The New York Times. A U.S. official confirmed the administration is assessing the fund’s application for removal “through established procedures” as part of an effort to “improve U.S.-Russia relations and help end the war.” A final decision has not yet been made. The Biden administration sanctioned the fund after Russia’s 2022 invasion, calling it a “slush fund” for Putin. People familiar told the Times that Russian officials pushed for relief in talks over the fund’s role in shipping Russian diesel to the U.S., after Trump suspended sanctions on Russian diesel October 9th. Treasury considers the fund already authorized to handle diesel and is running the normal removal process separately. This would follow earlier actions taken by President Donald J. Trump with respect to Russian sanctions. On October 16th, President Trump signed an order waiving the duties and most of the sanctions provisions of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act. On October 21st, as envoy Steve Witkoff met with Putin, Russia released Stephen Hubbard, a 74 year old American held since 2022. President Trump wrote that the U.S. “was not required to give anything in return.” In remarks that day he said the U.S. “gave nothing in exchange.” In a Truth Social post just a few minutes later, he wrote that “if sanctions would have been placed, certainly those negotiations would have come to a complete and total halt." Source: nytimes.com/2026/10/27/us/po…