Medvedev: No more hope for improvement of relations with US

MOSCOW, Aug 3 (PRIME) -- The new U.S. sanctions against Russia is an announcement of a full-scale trade war, and now there is no hope for improvement of relations between Moscow and Washington, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said late on Wednesday after U.S. President Donald Trump signed a bill introducing additional sanctions against Russia among several other states despite disagreement with what he called serious flaws.

“The U.S. President's signing of the package of new sanctions against Russia will have several consequences. First, it ends hopes for improvement of our relations with the new U.S. administration,” Medvedev said on his Facebook page.

“Second, it is a declaration of a full-fledged economic war on Russia. Third, the Trump administration has shown its absolute weakness by handing over executive power to the Congress in a most humiliating way. This changes the power balance in U.S. political circles.”

He said that since the sanctions were codified, they will remain in effect for decades unless a miracle happens.

“This legislation is going to be harsher than the Jackson-Vanik amendment as it is overarching and cannot be lifted by a special presidential order without Congress' approval. Thus, relations between Russia and the United States are going to be extremely tense regardless of the Congress’ makeup and regardless of who is president,” he said.

Medvedev said that the government will steadfastly continue to develop the economy and the social sector, make efforts to substitute imports, and solve major national tasks, relying mostly on ourselves.

“We have learned to do so in the past few years, in conditions of almost closed financial markets as well as foreign investors' and creditors' fear of investing in Russia upon penalty of sanctions against third parties and countries,” Medvedev said.

“To some extent, this has even been to our advantage, although sanctions are meaningless overall. We will cope.”

Last week both chambers of the U.S. parliament signed the bill, which prohibits companies to invest more than U.S. $1 million in a single payment or more than $5 million during the course of a year in construction of Russian export pipelines, as well as provision of goods, services, technologies and information support for the construction. The U.S. will continue standing against the construction of the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline.

A representative of Austrian oil and gas company OMV told PRIME that it is too early to speak about consequences of the new sanctions for construction of the Nord Stream-2 pipeline. “It is not even discussed now, which new sanctions, what the scale of these decisions are and who will be their target,” the representative said, adding that there is also no data on how these restrictions will be implemented.

The Nord Stream-2 project envisages construction of two lines of a natural gas pipeline with an annual capacity of up to 55 billion cubic meters, running from the Russian shore to Germany under the Baltic Sea. Russian gas giant Gazprom will implement the project together with Germany’s E.ON and BASF, Royal Dutch Shell, Austria’s OMV, and France’s Engie.

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