President Donald Trump gave the world an early glimpse of just how loosely he was planning to enforce new US sanctions on Moscow when it comes to China, the single-largest buyer of Russian crude.

In his high-profile meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday, Trump said the issue didn’t even come up. “We didn’t really discuss the oil,” Trump said. “We discussed working together to see if we could get that war finished.”

The lack of meaningful pressure on Beijing means oil will continue to be a major source of revenue for President Vladimir Putin’s war effort, despite Trump’s move to unveil his first sanctions on Russia last week — blacklisting state-run oil giant Rosneft PJSC and Lukoil PJSC, Russia’s biggest oil producers.

“If Trump won’t raise Russian oil with Xi, it undermi

See Full Page