Sanctioned Yesterday, Welcome Today. What Changed?
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Rep. Anna Paulina Luna departs a vote at the U.S. Capitol on March 5. | Francis Chung/POLITICO
On Wednesday, March 26, a Russian government aircraft landed in New York. On board: four members of Russia's State Duma - all of them under active U.S. sanctions, imposed by the United States government because of their role in supporting Russia's illegal annexation of Ukrainian territory and its ongoing war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.
They were not smuggled in. They were invited - by a sitting member of Congress.
Representative Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican from Florida, organized the visit and received State Department approval for it in January. To make the trip happen, the U.S. government had to waive its own sanctions. The same sanctions American lawmakers passed. The same sanctions that American taxpayers fund the enforcement of.
No public debate. No congressional vote. Quietly waived.
Who Are These People, and Why Does It Matter?
The State Duma is not a real legislature in any meaningful sense. It is the body that votes — unanimously, reliably, on command — to do whatever Vladimir Putin asks. It voted to annex Crimea. It voted to authorize the invasion of Ukraine. It votes to approve every war budget, every military escalation, every move that has prolonged a conflict now costing American allies billions and destabilizing the entire European security order.
These are not independent politicians. They are instruments of the Kremlin, here on a mission their boss personally approved.
Putin briefed the delegation before departure, according to his own spokesman.
Among the visitors: Vyacheslav Nikonov, grandson of Stalin's foreign policy chief; Svetlana Zhurova, an Olympic champion turned loyal Duma member; and others from the foreign affairs committee. Their delegation chair, Leonid Slutsky, was denied a visa — he faces multiple sexual harassment accusations — but the rest came through just fine.
Their stated goal? To "resume communication." To "see each other, hear and feel each other." To take, in Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov's words, "first, cautious steps" toward restoring ties between Washington and Moscow. Translation: Russia is testing how much goodwill it can extract from Washington.
And this week, it got a significant answer.
Credibility?
American citizens should care about this — not because of abstract geopolitics, but because of something very concrete: credibility.
The United States built a sanctions architecture specifically to tell the world that aggression has consequences. That you cannot invade your neighbor, seize its territory, and then walk into Washington for friendly meetings with members of Congress. That American commitments — to allies, to international law, to its own stated values — mean something.
When sanctioned Russian officials land in New York on a Kremlin government plane, briefed personally by Putin, hosted by a congresswoman pushing to cut military aid to Ukraine, that architecture cracks. And when America's word cracks, every alliance, every deterrent, every security guarantee it has ever made becomes a little less reliable.
That matters whether you care about Ukraine or not.
👉 Sanctions must stay.
The Bigger Picture Americans Deserve to See
This visit is not an isolated event. Consider what has happened in recent months:
In August 2025, President Trump hosted Putin in Alaska.
In February 2025, senior U.S. and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia to discuss not just Ukraine, but bilateral trade and investment — while the war was still ongoing. Last week, a Russian state tanker under U.S. sanctions sailed unchallenged into Cuba. And - sanctioned Russian lawmakers are in Washington.
Each step gets explained away as diplomacy, as pragmatism, as peace-seeking. But the cumulative effect is clear: the pressure that America and its allies built — the pressure that is the only leverage the democratic world has over a nuclear-armed aggressor — is being released, piece by piece, with little public accountability.
Russia has not withdrawn from Ukraine. It has not returned the thousands of Ukrainian children forcibly transferred to Russian re-education camps — a fact documented in a March 2026 report by Yale University researchers, who found that Russian state energy companies Gazprom and Rosneft directly facilitated those transfers. It has not respected international law in any meaningful way.
And yet the door is opening.
Sanctions on Russia must remain in place until there is full accountability for its ongoing aggression and respect for international law. Lifting them prematurely rewards rule-breaking, weakens global security, and sends a message to every authoritarian government watching: aggression works, and America will eventually come around.
We urge decision-makers to:
Maintain all existing sanctions on Russia
Reject any premature easing of restrictions
Continue coordinated international pressure
Stand firmly in defense of sovereignty and international law
What Comes Next Is Up to Americans
Ukraine sent its own delegation to Florida last weekend, trying to keep peace negotiations alive. Russia sent its delegation to Washington — not to negotiate, but to reconnect, to normalize, to be received as partners rather than aggressors.
America has every right to pursue peace. But peace that rewards an aggressor before accountability is established is not peace — it is a precedent. And precedents have consequences, for Americans and for the world.
The question is not whether the United States should engage with Russia diplomatically. The question is whether it should do so on Russia's terms, at Russia's pace, while Russia continues to occupy Ukrainian territory and hold Ukrainian children.
The answer should be no.
Resources & Sources
📰 The New York Times — Russian Lawmakers Go to U.S. for First Time Since Invasion of Ukraine (March 26, 2026): https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/world/europe/russia-us-talks-ukraine-sanctions.html
📢 Do Not Lift Sanctions on Russia: https://www.amukr.org/do-not-lift-sanctions-on-russia#/45/