New US sanctions on Russia less harsh as Washington treads warily

The new US sanctions on Russia over an alleged poison attack on a former Russian spy took effect on Monday. Some US experts have said that the US sanctions appeared to be milder than the US State Department had previously threatened, perhaps as a precaution.

The US Federal Register said in a notice on Monday that the new US sanctions went into effect on that same day, as the State Department has determined that “the Government of the Russian Federation has used chemical weapons in violation of international law or lethal chemical weapons against its own nationals.”

Under the new sanctions, US foreign assistance, sales of defense articles and services, sensitive goods and technology concerning Russia, “any credit, credit guarantees, or other financial assistance” by US government agencies, would be banned.

Meanwhile, the State Department stressed the necessity of the new move to partly waive sanctions in such areas as government space cooperation and commercial space launches, civil aviation and transactions with Russian nationals, wholly-owned US subsidiaries in Russia, and Russian state-owned or state-funded enterprises.

“Right now, the US is completely dependent on Russian space launches to send people to and from the International Space Station. It will be a year or so before America has a missile that can replace the Russian launch capability,” Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Xinhua.

It was also clear that, by including transactions with Russian nationals and state-owned or state-funded enterprises on its waiver list, the Trump administration was attempting to minimize the sanctions’ effects and quiet the Congress.

The latest US actions were in sharp contrast with the State Department’s August 8 threats to punish Russian state-funded companies. Its earlier stated harsh demands on Russia, such as agreeing not to use biochemical weapons on its nationals, providing credible assurance of not engaging in such behavior in the future, and allowing thirdparty observers to verify Russia’s actions on-site, were also left unmentioned this time.

Christopher Ford, assistant secretary of state, said in the notice that “these measures ... will remain in place for at least one year and until further notice,” also marking a departure from the earlier US threats that if Russia fails to fulfill the demands, Washington will impose stricter sanctions on Russia three months after the first batch of sanctions was implemented.

Analysts believe that the US efforts to impose milder sanctions were due to the fact that harsher actions would undermine the US’ own interests, and deal a blow to the dialogue between the two nations that had been initiated only a short time ago.

Benjamin Friedman, a foreign policy and defense expert at Defense Priorities, a Washington-based think tank, told Xinhua that the bipartisan enthusiasm in the US Congress tended to sanction Russia more harshly, so the administration may be trying to impose its own milder sanctions to “undercut the case for a new package of legally-mandated sanctions.”

West said that the new sanctions will aggravate existing tensions in US-Russian relations.