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, Deputy
Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Wednesday, according to the
Interfax news service.
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 on Facebook. 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, would strengthen 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, would let Congress block any effort by Trump to unilaterally
weaken 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.
U.S.
Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, chairman of the Foreign Relations
Committee, said Wednesday that senators want to examine North Korea
sanctions added to the bill by the House. If senators insist on changes
to the bill, passage could be delayed, possibly until September, when
lawmakers return from a recess.
"We all want this to become law
before we leave here for the recess," Corker told reporters in
Washington. He added: “The White House doesn’t like this bill. The State
Department doesn’t like this bill. This bill is going to become law,
OK.”
‘Anti-Russian Hysteria’
The sanctions are “pretty sad
from the viewpoint of Russian-American relations and prospects for
developing them, and no less depressing from the perspective of
international law and international trade,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry
Peskov told reporters Wednesday on a conference call. Putin will decide
on a response if the bill becomes law, he said.
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 on Twitter. The sanctions are “a new stage of
confrontation,” he said.
McDonald’s Corp.
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 shut for three months in 2014 as officials
carried out some 250 safety probes of the company’s restaurants after
the U.S. imposed sanctions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
‘Nothing to Lose’
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, the
RIA Novosti news service reported. 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, six
months after Trump 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.
Putin refrained from immediate retaliation, drawing
praise
from Trump, when the Obama administration shut down the compounds
outside New York and Washington and expelled 35 Russian diplomats in
December over the election hacking.
— With assistance by Terrence Dopp
