The Senate voted 86 to 11 to pass the sweeping Russia sanctions bill championed by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham on Friday, advancing legislation that would give the White House more leverage against Moscow as it seeks to end the war in Ukraine — and a brand new tariff tool.

Now that the bill has cleared the upper chamber, it’s up to lawmakers in the House to determine its fate when they return in September. President Donald Trump has already signaled he would sign the bill if it lands on his desk.

The bill, which Graham and cosponsors including Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) have worked to advance for more than a year, would issue mandatory sanctions not only on Russia’s leadership and energy sector, but also on abetters of Russia’s defense industry and so-called shadow fleet in an effort to curb the flow of cash to Moscow’s war chest.

Ukraine’s supporters on the Hill and officials in Kyiv have been urging its passage, arguing that it would deal a timely blow to Russia’s war efforts as Kyiv seeks to capitalize on a series of recent favorable turns in the war to end it altogether.

In comments on the Senate floor ahead of the vote, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and vocal backer of the bill Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) stressed the “urgency” of the moment.

“The momentum is on Ukraine’s side,” Shaheen said. “Now is the time to put more pressure on Putin.” She added that the situation on the ground could turn back in Moscow’s favor within months — especially with assistance from foreign foes like China.

It has already been a long road for the sanctions measure, which Graham and Blumenthal first introduced in April 2025. The lawmakers negotiated for months with the White House, which wanted more control over what entities it could sanction, and by how much. In July, Graham announced — from Kyiv — that the White House had agreed to a revised version of the bill.

The new iteration of the bill includes broad authority for the president to waive any sanctions that are applied, as long as the White House provides a written certification that the waiver is “in the national interests of the United States” and a report outlining the basis for the certification.

Following a last-minute demand from Trump, lawmakers also added language to the bill to extend certain sanctions on Iran.

Graham’s sudden death just days after winning Trump’s green light spurred his fellow senators to support the legislation, which cleared a procedural hurdle at the end of the month by a wide margin.

But a provision in the bill that would grant the White House authority to issue 100 percent tariffs on top buyers of Russian oil, and countries facilitating sanctions evasion, nearly derailed the measure’s passage in the upper chamber before lawmakers left town for August recess.

An amendment pushed by Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) that would have stripped the tariff language from the bill entirely failed in a 64 to 32 floor vote Friday.

Still, nearly one-third of the upper chamber voted in favor of striking the tariff language, highlighting Democrats’ worries about handing more tariff powers to a White House already eager to use that tool against Washington’s global allies and enemies. That Democratic discontent is likely a foreshadowing of a similar sticking point for lawmakers on the House side when they return from recess in September.

As Senate leadership tried to reach an agreement to fast-track consideration of the bill before the chamber adjourned for the summer, lawmakers opposed to the tariff provisions threatened to derail that effort over squabbles about what amendments should get a floor vote.

One of those amendments was an effort from Sens. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.), to add language curbing the tariff powers afforded to Trump in the bill. Warnock — who voted to advance the bill in July — had threatened to thwart Senate leadership’s effort to fast-track consideration of the legislation this week if his amendment didn’t get a floor vote.

But Warnock pulled the amendment at the eleventh hour Thursday evening after securing the Trump administration’s commitment to enact a clear off-ramp for countries hit with tariffs, according to a person familiar with the senator’s plans granted anonymity to speak about internal conversations.

That move may not go far enough to quell the concerns of Democrats in the House — some of whom have already expressed frustration over the provision.

House Foreign Affairs ranking member Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) issued a joint statement following the Senate vote slamming the current bill text as “unacceptable” and citing the broad waiver authority and tariff powers granted to the White House.

But the lawmakers vowed to “continue to seek a path forward that remedies this bill’s flaws.”

BERLIN — Europe’s reserves of natural gas are running dangerously low, risking fresh energy woes if the Iran war rages on and cold spells drive up heating demand over winter.

But the continent’s top energy user doesn’t seem too bothered.

Germany is the EU’s biggest vulnerability because its sheer size means gas shortfalls there could be felt in neighboring countries, driving up prices across the bloc if it fails to restore its reserves.

That’s prompted growing calls for Berlin to do the unthinkable: intervene outright to direct its state-controlled energy giants to buy gas at any price, abandoning years of free-market doctrine on energy policy.

So far, the government has refused to budge, even as it falls short of EU targets and faces the risk of physical supply shortages as early as November. It’s a gamble that the markets will figure everything out, even as war and hot weather distort traditional incentives and upend global supply chains.

“Storage levels are not only exceptionally low for this time of year, but historically low,” said Sebastian Heinermann, the managing director of Germany’s top gas storage association, INES.

But Germany, he warned, is still relying on an outdated, market-oriented approach to refill its reserves, even when there are “hardly any market-economic incentives left.”

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, EU countries have been required to hit gas storage targets of 90 percent of national capacity by winter to prevent serious supply shortfalls. The EU lowered that target to 80 percent following the outbreak of the Iran war to prevent panic buying.

Typically, refilling is the responsibility of traders and utilities, which buy gas cheap in the summer to store and then sell in the winter for a profit. But buyers say higher summer prices as a result of the Iran war and climate change have upended that dynamic, leaving gas reserves across the bloc at around 58 percent of national capacity, 16 percentage points below the five-year historical average and the lowest level since 2011. 

The low reserves have already added to the increased pressure on gas prices linked to renewed tensions around the Strait of Hormuz, with the European natural gas benchmark now consistently higher than it was for the first four months of the Iran war.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has said the bloc faces no winter supply risks. But a report by energy analytics firm Rapidan projects that reserves will rise to only 65 percent of total storage capacity by November, arguing that hitting the EU’s target by winter won’t be possible without “materially higher prices.” 

That risk has been exacerbated, analysts say, by the bloc’s move in recent years to replace its long-term supply deals with Russia with short-term purchases of globally traded liquefied natural gas. These seaborne cargoes are highly mobile and go to the highest bidder — leaving buyers more exposed to volatility on international markets, especially in the wake of the loss of key supplies from Qatar and rising demand in Asia.

Germany, the bloc’s largest gas consumer, has seen its reserves fill up even more slowly than others, in part thanks to its more hands-off, market-led approach to restocking than many of its neighbors. As a result, reserves stood at only 47 percent of national capacity in August, according to the latest data — the lowest fill level since records began. That’s especially worrying as the country’s reserves are important for the bloc as a whole, representing over 20 percent of the EU’s storage capacity. 

Nevertheless, Berlin is staying the course. While its energy ministry has acknowledged the country’s historically low reserves, it has refused to intervene to direct its main state-controlled gas buyers, SEFE and Uniper, to buy gas at current prices to ensure its targets are met, instead of waiting for market conditions to improve.

“It is the responsibility of companies and traders to fill the storage facilities for the winter,” a spokesperson for the German energy ministry told POLITICO. “Government-led filling of the storage facilities would further constrain the gas market and drive prices even higher. The supply situation over the coming months would actually deteriorate.”

Whether this is the right approach will become clearer by winter, said Laurent Ruseckas, a senior gas analyst at S&P Global. If temperatures are unseasonably low, traders may be forced to buy additional supplies at late notice, driving up prices, especially if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. On the other hand, intervening could raise prices prematurely if winter turns out to be mild.

“If you start buying now to get storage to some politically predetermined level you’re making prices higher now to get insurance that you won’t get higher prices in the winter when it’s cold,” said Ruseckas.

Germany’s reluctance to move quickly also highlights the difficulty the EU’s fragmented energy sector has in competing with more centralized Asian economies that have acted more quickly to secure supplies, consistently outbidding European countries even as their reserves run low.

Others warn that physical supply strains are also possible. Heinermann, of INES, warned that even filling the country’s reserves to 76 percent of capacity — which SEFE says is achievable — would not necessarily meet its supply needs if winter is “exceptionally cold.” That could ripple out to neighboring countries to which Germany is treaty-bound to provide emergency gas assistance, including Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Denmark.

Heinermann called on the German government to encourage faster restocking by lowering network charges at storage facilities or abolishing the conversion levy, fees imposed for the conversion of gas on national grids. Berlin has already unveiled plans for a new emergency gas stockpile, but that will only cover 10 percent of the country’s gas capacity and kick off officially next summer.

It’s no surprise that other major gas consumers have already waded into the private sector. The Netherlands, another free-market champion suffering from low gas reserves, earlier this summer allocated €1.2 billion for its state energy company, EBN, to more swiftly top up its reserves. 

But Berlin’s energy giants are sticking to their guns — for now.

A spokesperson for SEFE told POLITICO that even though “international conflicts” could weigh on European storage levels, the 70 percent target “remains achievable” without intervention. He pointed out that 78 percent of German storage capacity has already been booked, though acknowledged that doesn’t necessarily translate to actual volumes of gas stored. 

Regulatory measures could be useful if “necessary” but could distort markets and increase costs, he added, without specifying what.

A Uniper spokesperson was less confident, warning it would be “increasingly challenging to reach the target storage levels before the winter season starts” at the current rate of filling. But she too stopped short of calling for intervention, arguing instead for better incentives for refilling — mirroring growing calls from gas lobbyists in Brussels to scrap the rules outright.