The State Department said Tuesday it hopes President-elect Trump will keep sanctions that President Obama imposed on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine.
“We would hope that they would see the wisdom in keeping these sanctions and this pressure on Russia, because we have seen it have an effect,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters. “But obviously, these are decisions they have to make and we also respect that process as well.”
Obama isn’t waiting for Trump to be convinced. The Treasury Department announced a new round of sanctions targeted at Russian officials and infrastructure companies, despite secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson’s belief that sanctions often fail to have their intended effect on foreign powers.
“These targeted sanctions aim to maintain pressure on Russia by sustaining the costs of its occupation of Crimea and disrupting the activities of those who support the violence and instability in Ukraine,” John Smith, acting director of the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, said Tuesday.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea marks the first annexation of sovereign territory in Europe since 1938, when Nazi Germany annexed Austria. The move alarmed American allies in eastern Europe and embarrassed the United States, which agreed to guarantee Ukrainian sovereignty when Ukraine surrendered its nuclear weapons after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov decried the new sanctions and warned that Russia might retaliate. “We retain the right to choose the time, place and form of our responsive actions in a way that suits us,” Ryabkov said, according to Reuters.
That statement echoes President Obama’s own threat to punish Russia for conducting cyberattacks against the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, in addition to strategic leaks of Democratic documents that embarrassed Clinton’s team.
“I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action and we will at a time and place of our own choosing,” Obama told NPR last week.
Kirby defended the latest sanctions against Russia, noting the recent spike in violence in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists are trying to extend control beyond the territorial boundary agreed to in recent ceasefire negotiations.
“Over just the last two days, six Ukrainian service members have been killed and 33 wounded in a Russian separatist attempt to seize additional Ukrainian territory,” Kirby said. “The highest two-day casualty figure that we’ve seen since 2015.”
