Russia won’t move to retaliate against new U.S. sanctions until it understands how those sanctions will work, a top Russian official said Thursday.
“As we still do not understand what it means officially, it would be definitely wrong to speak of any retaliatory measures now,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Thursday, according to TASS, a state-run outlet.
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Russia will face new U.S. sanctions over the use of a chemical weapon in an attempted assassination on British soil, President Trump’s administration concluded on Monday. The State Department unveiled the sanctions, which are prescribed by federal law, and notified Moscow of the impending punishment on Wednesday.
The sanctions include enhanced restrictions on the export of national security sensitive technology, and companies selling the technology must receive a license from the Commerce Department.
“When these sanctions go into effect, we will be presumptively denying these applications [for a license],” a senior State Department official told reporters Wednesday. “It is possible that the trade affected could reach potentially hundreds of millions of dollars.”
While Peskov said Russian retaliation wasn’t certain yet, he also said Russia clearly opposes the new U.S. measure.
“Of course, such decisions being taken by the U.S. side are absolutely unfriendly and can hardly be associated with the, no[t] easy, but constructive atmosphere achieved at the latest meeting of the two presidents,” Peskov said.
Putin’s spokesman took a softer line than Moscow’s diplomatic corps, which predicted counter sanctions.
“The Russian side will engage in working out retaliation measures to a new unfriendly move by Washington,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, according to TASS.
The Trump administration decided on sanctions after a review of the Sergei Skripal affair. The former Russian military intelligence officer was poisoned by “a military-grade nerve agent,” along with his niece, in Salibsury, England.
British officials believe the attack was in retaliation for Skripal’s work as a double agent on behalf of the United Kingdom, even though he was released to the British in 2010 as part of a spy exchange. The Skripals survived, but another woman died after she and her partner reportedly came across the discarded weapon and were exposed to the toxin.
Russia denies any responsibility for the incidents, and instead accused western powers of staging the attacks in order to maintain hostile relations with the former Cold War rival.
