President Trump should demand “concrete concessions” from Russian President Vladimir Putin before reversing sanctions imposed after Russia annexed Crimea and destabilized eastern Ukraine, a former NATO secretary-general urged.
“While I respect the new president’s right to conduct the foreign policy that he sees as beneficial to the U.S., I would urge strong caution against reversing any sanctions on Russia without concrete concessions,” Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the civilian leader of NATO from 2009 to 2014 and a former prime minister of Denmark, said Friday.
Trump’s interest in lifting sanctions on Russia has him poised to make one of the most consequential foreign policy decisions of his term in the earliest days of his presidency. Trump talked throughout the campaign of coordinating with Russia to fight terrorists, but the decision to overlook the violence in Ukraine would alarm allies and vindicate Putin’s decision to carry out “the first gunpoint land grab in Europe since the end of World War II,” as Rasmussen has described it.
“The Russian leaders are trying to escape accountability for their illegal annexation of Crimea and actions in Eastern Ukraine,” Rasmussen said. “Easing sanctions will only embolden Russia’s aggression in the region, putting the security interests of Ukraine and the United States in jeopardy.”
Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko is engaged in his own lobbying campaign to avert that move. “America should be great again,” Poroshenko said in a rhetorical nod to Trump’s campaign slogan at the World Economic Forum.
“President Trump has confirmed that he is sticking on the obligations of the United States,” Poroshenko told Reuters, citing private conversations, before praising Trump’s Cabinet choices. “With that situation, I think it does give us a lot more optimism for the future.”
Trump is rumored to be mulling an executive order to reverse the sanctions that could come as early as Saturday, when he is also scheduled to talk with Putin on the phone. “All of that is under consideration,” White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told Fox News on Friday. “If another nation that has considerable resources [wants] to join with the United States of America to defeat radical Islamic terrorism, then we’re listening.”
But Rasmussen says that cooperation needs to be delayed. “We would hope that President Trump heeds the advice of his international allies and continues to hold Russia accountable for its actions and forces it to come to the table to negotiate a peaceful resolution to a war the Russian leaders unnecessarily provoked,” he said.
