In reality, the United States under the leadership of President Donald Trump, despite the statements, has not given up the policy of putting pressure on Russia, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared on Monday. In this context, he pointed out, for example, the American sanctions against the Russian oil giants Lukoil and Rosneft. According to Lavrov, the US is currently not ready to fulfill its own proposals regarding the end of the war in Ukraine, the minister does not see a bright future even in the resumption of mutual economic cooperation. TASR informs about it.
- The US continues to put pressure on Russia despite Trump’s statements.
- The US has imposed sanctions against Russian oil companies.
- Lavrov claims that the US is blocking the resumption of economic cooperation.
Trump has given Russia and Ukraine time to end the war by June, and in order to achieve this goal, he will probably put pressure on both sides, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Saturday.
The attitude of the USA towards Ukraine
According to Lavrov, Russia considered the US position towards Ukraine important, which is why the head of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin, agreed to the US proposal during a meeting with Trump in Alaska last August. According to him, this should have resolved the “Ukrainian issue” and the US and Russia should have started focusing on resuming mutually beneficial cooperation.
“In practice, however, the opposite is happening: new sanctions are imposed, attacks on tankers are organized in international waters in violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, India and other partners are discouraged from buying affordable Russian energy, while Europe has long banned such purchases and forces them to buy American liquefied natural gas at significantly higher prices. In the economic sphere, the United States effectively declared the goal of economic dominance,” declared the head of Russian diplomacy in in an interview for TV BRICS. According to him, Russia is ready to cooperate with the USA, but as he claims, they are creating “artificial” obstacles.
Lavrov on Trump’s policy
Lavrov also says that the actions of the Trump administration, despite the rhetoric of its representatives, are fundamentally no different from the actions taken by the administration of former US President Joe Biden in relation to Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Trump often refers to him as the culprit and has been saying for a long time that if he and not Biden were the president, Russia would never have invaded Ukraine.
“At the same time, despite the statements of the US administration about the resolution of the war in Ukraine, which was initiated by Biden, about its removal from the negotiation agenda and thereby opening clear and promising prospects for mutually beneficial Russian-American investments and other cooperation, all the laws that Biden adopted to punish Russia after the start of a special military operation were not questioned by the Trump administration,” Russian TASS agency quoted Lavrov as saying.
Sanctions against Russian companies
The USA imposed sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil and 34 of their subsidiaries in October last year. At the time, Washington justified this step by Putin’s reluctance to end the war in Ukraine. Some of these measures were eased in early December until April 29, 2026.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday that new US sanctions against Russia will depend on the outcome of peace talks that have been held in Abu Dhabi in recent weeks and will continue. So far, according to the AP agency, the talks have not brought any important breakthrough, because the hostile countries insist on their terms.
Kremlin officials repeat that the Alaska agreement with the US is fundamental for Russia. At the time, Reuters reported that Moscow interprets the agreement to mean that Russia will gain control over the entire eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas, while the front line in the east and south of Ukraine will be frozen.
