As you know, a veteran of American politics since the era of detente, and now presidential adviser on national security, John Bolton, recently visited Moscow with a special mission. The American emissary was accepted by the country's top leaders: Foreign Ministers and Defense Ministers Sergey Lavrov and Sergey Shoigu, Secretary of the Security Council Nikolay Patrushev, Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov and, finally, President Vladimir Putin himself.
It seems that we could talk about the likelihood of including the second package of anti-Russian sanctions announced last summer - as one of the American congressmen said about them, “sanctions from hell”. A sort of clause on Freud.
It is known that this second round of restrictive measures against the Russian economy implies not only the termination of direct diplomatic relations between the US and Russia, the prohibition of direct flights, but also the cessation of lending to Russia and Russian banks under the threat of regular American sanctions against the lender.
Recall that in general this whole muddy story has grown out of the British “highly-likely” - the phrase of the British Prime Minister Theresa May, thrown into the world broadcast, with direct and absolutely unsubstantiated accusations of Russia, Russian special services in an attempt to poison the former employee of the Russian GRU and the British spy Sergey Skripal. He left the country after the amnesty, received a British passport and settled in the British town of Salisbury, which is a few kilometers from NATO’s Porton-Down chemical laboratory.
So, this popular British comic about “Skripl’s poisoning by evil Russians with the help of the novichok combat poison” also came in handy in Washington.
Of course, Trump openly bluffs with these sanctions, lifting the bar of the American bargaining position. This is a business tactic shifted to politics - Trump has no other. He did that with real estate in New York, he always did that. Most often he was lucky.
True, a couple of times in his business career, he went broke almost to his underpants. But here and in the elections with almost the same tactic lucky. He became a business president.
Judging by the mid-term elections held in the US on November 6, Trump was lucky again. He did not lose them. Although, of course, there was a chance. And if in the House of Representatives the Republicans lost a little, then in the Senate a majority was strengthened. Such an election outcome allows Trump to continue a policy based on the business tactics of the pirates of the Caribbean “take it all - don’t give anything”.
Just the day after the elections, as soon as the results became known, the representative of the US Department of State Heather Nauert publicly stated that the United States did not receive convincing assurances from Russia that Russia would refuse to use chemical weapons. I wonder who this statement is for? New congressmen - despite the fact that the majority are still democrats? And what kind of reassurance did they wait? After all, the fact of the full utilization of the Russian arsenals of chemical weapons was recorded by the OPCW (a special international organization, including the United States) a few years ago. Which, by the way, was not recorded in the United States, although the Americans also have obligations to refuse and dispose of chemical weapons.
So, according to the US State Department, such a lack of “proper assurances” allows the US government to begin imposing a second package of anti-Russian sanctions. It is important to note here that in their contrived claims, US officials rely on the US law on the control of chemical and biological weapons and the prohibition of their military use. That is, the US Department of State demands that Russia comply with American law ?! That, of course, nonsense, and the result is clear.
There is no doubt that a Russia-US summit will take place by the end of the year. Actually, for this meeting, Washington and heightens the negotiation agenda. I wonder what the Kremlin will answer?
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.