Russia threatened to retaliate against
new sanctions passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, saying they made it
all but impossible to achieve the Trump administration’s goal of improved
relations.
The measures push U.S.-Russia ties into uncharted
territory and “don’t leave room for the normalization of relations” in the
foreseeable future, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said
Wednesday.
Hope “is dying” for improved relations
because the scale of “the anti-Russian consensus in Congress makes dialogue
impossible and for a long time,” Konstantin Kosachyov, chairman of the
international affairs committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament, said. Russia should prepare a response to the sanctions that’s “painful for
the Americans,” he said.
The bill passed by a vote of 419-3 on
Tuesday strengthens sanctions against Russia less than three weeks after
President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin held their
first official meeting at the Group of 20 summit. The measure, which now goes
to the Senate, requires Trump to seek congressional approval before easing
sanctions imposed under the Obama administration for Russian meddling in the 2016
presidential elections and its support for separatists in Ukraine. The White
House has sent mixed signals about whether Trump will sign the bill.
‘Anti-Russian
Hysteria’
Trump will sign the law because “he’s a
prisoner of Congress and anti-Russian hysteria,” Alexei Pushkov, a senator in
Russia’s upper house of parliament said. The sanctions are “a new
stage of confrontation,” he said. McDonald’s restaurants in Russia aren’t
“a sacred cow” and should face “sanitary sanctions,” Pushkov said in a separate
tweet. The fast food chain’s press office in Russia declined to comment
immediately. The largest McDonald’s in Russia was shuttered for three months in
2014 amid about 250 safety probes of the company’s restaurants by officials
after the U.S. imposed sanctions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
Russia has prepared “economic and
political measures that will be adopted if the Senate and Trump support the
bill,” said Vladimir Dzhabarov, deputy chairman of the international affairs
committee in the upper house said. Relations
with the U.S. “are at such a low level that we have nothing to lose” by
retaliating, he said.
Putin said after the
meeting in Hamburg that he believed Trump accepted his denial that Russia interfered in the
election. Congressional committees and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are
examining possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, which Trump
has dismissed as a “witch hunt.”
The House vote adds
to deepening Russian gloom over prospects for a breakthrough in relations with
Trump, six months after he took office pledging to improve ties with Putin.
Russia threatened last week to expel U.S. diplomats and seize embassy property
in Moscow, after Ryabkov failed to gain agreement at talks in Washington
for the return of Russian diplomatic compounds taken by the Obama
administration in December in response to the election hacking.
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