On Friday, the White House announced that Trump would sign the law passed by Congress last week that strengthens existing sanctions and expands some of them, especially in the oil sector.
Nevertheless he did not give any detail on what Russia’s response could be, saying simply: “we will see”, adding that he had not seen the final version of the USA sanctions bill.
The move comes the day after the U.S. Congress gave bilateral approval to a new slate of sanctions on Russian Federation over its interference in the 2016 election.
The idea of Trump seeking to strengthen the sanctions drew skepticism given that the administration had spent weeks lobbying for a weaker bill.
Republicans and Democrats had urged Trump to quickly sign the measure into law after the House and Senate cleared it with veto-proof majorities in both chambers.
Relations between the two countries، already at a post-Cold War low، have deteriorated even further after U.S. intelligence agencies accused Russian Federation of trying to meddle in last year’s USA presidential election، something Moscow flatly denies.
Some former officials said Russia could take other steps, such as seeking to help Russian-backed forces seize more ground in eastern Ukraine or to try to limit US air operations in Syria, while others said any reaction might be more muted.
The Republican-controlled US House of Representatives votes overwhelmingly to impose new sanctions against Iran, Russia and North Korea.
Russian Federation denies it interfered in the election and Trump has said there was no collusion. They’ve argued it would infringe on the president’s executive authority and tie his hands as he explores avenues of communication and cooperation between the two former Cold War foes.
Relations between Russian Federation and the United States dropped to a post-Cold War low following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine, where fighting since 2014 has left 10,000 people dead. McCain said the bill’s passage was long overdue, a jab at Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress. McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has called Putin a murderer and a thug.
“It is a great pity that Russian-American relations are being sacrificed to this domestic, internal American issue”, Putin said Thursday, according to CNN.”What we are seeing (in the US) is merely anti-Russia hysteria”.
Iranian lawmakers, meanwhile, are closely monitoring all moves by the United States, particularly the new sanctions against the Islamic Republic and Russian Federation, and will make swift decisions accordingly, said Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani earlier in the day. The first face-to-face meeting between Trump and Putin, in Hamburg, Germany, earlier this month, failed to yield a breakthrough. The Senate on Friday decisively approved a package of stiff financial sanctions against Russia, Iran and North Korea. But President Vladimir Putin at the time delayed the retaliatory steps in what officials said was an olive branch to the incoming Trump administration. If Trump rejected the bill, Corker said, Congress would overrule him.
It remains to be seen if the president will attempt to veto the bill. “I just don’t think that’s a good way to start off as president”.