Washington
\nDonald Trump has blocked numerous sanctions on Russia two days before they were due to take effect, as a row with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky deepens.
\nThe sanctions were passed by the US Congress and signed into law by the US president in September.
\nBut Trump issued an executive order on Friday night saying that suspending some was in the US national interest, prompting a backlash from US lawmakers. Zelensky said it was unfortunate the US has decided to \u201ccompletely disregard\u201d the sanctions.
\nRussian envoy Kirill Dmitriev said Trump\u2019s order was \u201can important and truly historic moment\u201d, and that the sanctions would have inflicted \u201cserious damage\u201d on the US and global market.
\nRelations between Washington and Kyiv frayed after the US struck a controversial deal to import Russian diesel last week. Ukraine has accused the Trump administration of withdrawing key military support.
\nSince then, Ukraine\u2019s president declared it was nice to be among \u201creal leaders\u201d while addressing an EU summit, after Trump said Zelensky was \u201cmore difficult to deal with\u201d than Russian President Vladimir Putin.
\nThe sanctions suspension seemed to add further fuel to the fire.
\nZelensky said on Saturday morning that the sanctions \u201ccould have helped enormously\u201d and that the law was \u201csupposed to impose truly effective pressure on Russia to bring this war to an end\u201d.
\nHe pointed to Russian overnight attacks on 15 Ukrainian energy facilities that had caused power cuts in several regions and said: \u201cRussia is trying to cause a blackout in Ukraine \u2013 right before winter.\u201d
\nZelensky said it was \u201cimportant that everyone in America also sees what is really happening\u201d on the ground.
\nThe new US sanctions law took aim at Russia\u2019s economy by giving Trump broad powers to levy tariffs of up to 100% on imports from the top five purchasers of Russian oil and gas \u2013 most significantly China and India.
\nIt also included sanctions against senior Russian figures, including Putin, as well as Russian financial institutions and Moscow\u2019s so-called \u201cshadow fleet\u201d of vessels used to circumvent existing embargoes.
\nUS Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that the suspension would consist of a 60-day pause to allow for the Trump administration to analyse the impact they might have on the US and global economy.
\nThe suspension drew criticism from US politicians from both main parties.
\nDemocrats including the Virginia Congressman Don Beyer criticised the move, accusing Trump of capitulating to Moscow and turning his back on Kyiv and Zelensky.
\nA handful of Republicans also came out against the move.
\nTexas Senator Ted Cruz, a Trump ally, called waiving the sanctions a mistake, telling Fox News that there were other ways to address fuel prices, while the state\u2019s other Senatory John Cornyn called the move \u201creckless\u201d.
\nNorth Carolina Senator Thom Tillis called it \u201cbeyond irresponsible\u201d, arguing that Trump could bring energy prices down by ending the Iran war instead of \u201cdoing a solid\u201d for Putin.
\nNebraska Representative Don Bacon indicated that US lawmakers will now resist funding Trump\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Washington Donald Trump has blocked numerous sanctions on Russia two days before they were due to take effect, as a row with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky deepens. The sanctions were passed by the US Congress and signed into law by the US president in September. But Trump issued an executive order on Friday night …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":104528,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104510"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104536,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104510\/revisions\/104536"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/104528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}