OTTAWA, June 17. /TASS/. US President Donald Trump said he is reluctant to tighten sanctions on Russia as he is waiting to see whether or not a Ukraine deal is there.
Reporters asked the US head of state on the sidelines of a G7 summit in the Canadian resort area of Kananaskis on Monday why wait to sanction Moscow. "I am waiting to see whether or not a deal [on Ukraine] is there. Don’t forget <…> sanctions cost us a lot of money. When I sanction a country, that costs the US a lot of money, a tremendous amount of money. It’s not just `let’s sign a document’. You are talking about billions and billions of dollars. Sanctions are not that easy. It’s not just a one-way street," Trump explained.
According to him, "Money is not the thing in these cases." "If I can stop that [conflict], I’ll be very happy. <…> So, you could say, what am I doing? But I’d like to see if I could stop," Trump said.
When asked to comment on calls for more anti-Russian restrictions from a number of European countries, Trump said: "Well, Europe is saying that, but they haven't done it yet. Let's see them do it first."
In early April, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a sanctions bill to Congress. The initiative envisioned, among other measures, secondary sanctions targeting Russia’s trading partners. The proposal included imposing a 500% import tariff on goods entering the US from countries that purchase oil, gas, uranium, and other commodities from Russia. Senator Rand Paul (Republican, Kentucky) recently warned in an op-ed for the Responsible Statecraft website that the country most harmed by the potential passage of this legislation would be the United States itself, both economically and strategically.