The government is officially closed, and the House of Representatives is in an extended recess, but the Senate keeps working. 

On Wednesday October 22, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a business meeting to consider 19 bills and approve two nominations (Joel Rayburn to be Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs and Andrew Veprek to be Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration).  The bills focused mostly on Russia’s war in Ukraine, and on security concerns relating to China, and generally commanded bipartisan support.  All of the bills were approved, though some were amended.

One of the more consequential bills was the “REPO Implementation Act”, S. 2918, sponsored by Sen. Whitehouse, and co-sponsored by, among others, Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Risch.  This bill seeks to build on last year’s “Rebuilding Economic Prosperity and Opportunity for Ukrainians Act”, or “REPO Act”.  That legislation granted authority to the President to confiscate the approximately $5 billion in immobilized Russian sovereign assets in the United States and provide that money to Ukraine and Ukrainian claimants as compensation for the injuries inflicted on them by the war. 

Presidents Biden and Trump have both hesitated to exercise that authority, however, not least because they have wanted any confiscation of immobilized Russian assets to be a collective effort by the United States and its allies.  Until very recently, there was strong resistance in Europe to confiscating the roughly $200 billion in immobilized Russian assets there.  That is now changing, with both European Commission President von der Leyen and German Chancellor Merz calling in recent weeks for Europe to “lend” the Russian money to Ukraine, with Ukraine under no obligation to repay the loan unless and until Russia pays compensation to Ukraine for the damage it has inflicted in the war.  Treasury Secretary Bessent has also encouraged Europe to provide the Russian assets under its jurisdiction to Ukraine, but has not indicated whether the United States is prepared to join in taking such action. 

In this context, the REPO Implementation Act is significant, because it calls on the U.S. government to begin transferring every three months $250 million of the Russian assets in the United States for assistance to Ukraine, until the Russian money has been exhausted.  The bill makes clear that the reason for drawing down the money incrementally in this manner is to apply steady pressure on President Putin to negotiate peace in Ukraine. 

But certainly the practical consequence is to contribute additional momentum to the growing international consensus in favor of utilizing immobilized Russian assets for the benefit of Ukraine.  This message was reinforced by the Committee’s defeat of an amendment to the bill offered by Sen. Lee that would have delayed confiscation of the Russian assets in the United States by providing that those assets would only be confiscated pursuant to the bill once all of the $200+ billion in Russian assets in Europe has been made available to Ukraine. 

Also marked up on October 22 was Sen. Graham’s “Designating the Russian Federation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism Act”, S. 2978.  The declared purpose of this bill is to require that Russia be formally designated as a state sponsor of terrorism unless it releases the thousands of Ukrainian children it has kidnapped and taken to Russia.  The bill asserts that at least 19,546 Ukrainian children have been abducted in this manner.  If so designated, Russia would join Iran, Cuba, North Korea and Syria on the U.S. government list of foreign governments sponsoring terrorism.  The principal consequences of such a designation are the vigorous application of U.S. export controls, a prohibition on the delivery of any U.S. assistance, and mandatory opposition to multilateral lending to the designated countries.

An additional consequence of designation as a state sponsor of terrorism is that, under the Section 201 of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act of 2002, U.S. plaintiffs who win court judgments against state sponsors in cases alleging the state sponsor was responsible for injuries sustained in an act of terrorism are entitled to attach sovereign assets of the state sponsor.  Ordinarily such assets are immune to attachment under the doctrine of sovereign immunity, but the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act lifts that immunity with respect to state sponsors of terrorism.  Among the Russian sovereign assets that could be attached in this manner if Russia is designated as a state sponsor are the $5 billion in immobilized sovereign assets that the REPO Act authorizes to be confiscated for the benefit of Ukraine.

There was tension, therefore, between this bill and the REPO and REPO Implementation Acts.  This is because fast-moving U.S. plaintiffs would likely win large default judgments against Russia (unless Russia chose to defend itself in U.S. court, which seems unlikely) and could end up attaching most of the $5 billion in immobilized Russian assets in the United States before they were provided to Ukraine. 

The Foreign Relations Committee resolved this tension in favor of the REPO and REPO Implementation Acts by adopting a Managers Substitute Amendment to Sen. Graham’s bill.  This amendment added a new section 5 to Sen. Graham’s bill providing that the Russian assets subject to confiscation under the REPO Act may not be attached to enforce terrorism-related judgments against Russia, notwithstanding section 201 of the Terrorism Risk Insurance Act.

A third Russia-related bill approved by the Foreign Relations Committee, the “Severing Technology Transfer Operations and Partnerships between China and Russia Act of 2025’’ or the ‘‘STOP China and Russia Act of 2025”, S. 2657, was a sanctions bill.  It seeks to encourage the imposition of U.S. asset-blocking and visa denial sanctions on persons and entities in China that are providing assistance to the Russian war effort in Ukraine.  The lead sponsor of the bill was Sen. Shaheen, the Ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee.

As originally introduced, the bill would have required the President to determine and report to Congress on a case-by-case basis within 90 days of enactment whether a list of prominent Chinese companies met the criteria for designation for sanctions under the bill.  However, the Committee adopted a Managers Substitute Amendment to the bill that removed the requirement that the President individually determine and report whether named Chinese companies met the criteria for sanctions designation.  Instead, Chinese entities will be sanctioned under the bill only if the President affirmatively determines on his own initiative that they meet the bill’s criteria for being sanctioned.

Interestingly, the day after the Foreign Relations Committee approved these three Russia-related bills, the Trump Administration announced that it was imposing asset-blocking sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.  This was the first escalation of U.S. sanctions against Russia since President Trump assumed office, apart from the “secondary tariff” that the President imposed on India over its imports of Russian oil in August.

In addition to the STOP China and Russia Act of 2025, nine other bills relating to China were also approved by the Foreign Relations Committee on October 22.  Here is a list of all the measures considered at the Committee markup:  https://www.foreign.senate.gov/hearings/business-meeting-10-22-2025.

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Photo of Stephen Rademaker Stephen Rademaker

With wide-ranging experience working on national security issues in the White House, the State Department, and the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, Stephen Rademaker helps clients navigate international policy, sanctions, and CFIUS challenges.

Among his accomplishments in public service, Stephen had lead…

With wide-ranging experience working on national security issues in the White House, the State Department, and the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, Stephen Rademaker helps clients navigate international policy, sanctions, and CFIUS challenges.

Among his accomplishments in public service, Stephen had lead responsibility, as a U.S. House staffer, for drafting the legislation that created the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Serving as an Assistant Secretary of State from 2002 through 2006, he headed at various times three bureaus of the State Department, including the Bureau of Arms Control and the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation. He directed the Proliferation Security Initiative, as well as nonproliferation policy toward Iran and North Korea, and led strategic dialogues with Russia, China, India, and Pakistan. He also headed U.S. delegations to numerous international conferences, including the 2005 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

Stephen concluded his government career on Capitol Hill in 2007, serving as Senior Counsel and Policy Director for National Security Affairs for then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN). In this role, he helped manage all aspects of the legislative process relating to foreign policy, defense, intelligence and national security. He earlier served as Chief Counsel for the House Select Committee on Homeland Security of the U.S. House of Representatives and as Deputy Staff Director and Chief Counsel of the House Committee on International Relations.

During President George H. W. Bush’s administration, Stephen served as General Counsel of the Peace Corps, Associate Counsel to the President in the Office of White House Counsel, and as Deputy Legal Adviser to the National Security Council. After leaving government in 2007, he continued to serve as the U.S. representative on the United Nations Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters, and he was subsequently appointed by House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) to the U.S. Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism.

In addition to his practice at Covington, Stephen is an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University, where he teaches a course on Sanctions in U.S. Foreign Policy in the Security Studies Program of the School of Foreign Service.

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