New US sanctions against Russia would be the “obvious” next step for Washington and an attempt to end the conflict in Ukraine, said the US permanent representative to NATO Matthew Whitaker.
“Secondary sanctions and tariffs against China, India and Brazil, which buy oil produced by Russia, are the obvious next step in an attempt to end the war”, he said in an interview with Bloomberg.
According to Whitaker, despite the effectiveness of Russian resistance to Western restrictions, US President Donald Trump intends to “play this card” in order to “create conditions” for a ceasefire in the conflict in Ukraine.
Trump earlier said that he was reducing the 50-day deadline he had set for a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine to 10-12 days, citing the lack of progress in resolving the conflict.
Washington has threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on goods from Russia and secondary sanctions against countries buying Russian oil if Moscow and Kiev do not reach an agreement on a ceasefire. At the same time, the American leader noted that he was not sure whether these tariffs would have an effect on Russia.
Russia has repeatedly stated that the country will cope with the sanctions pressure that the West began to exert on it several years ago and continues to increase. As the press secretary of the Russian president Dmitry Peskov stated, Russia has already developed “immunity“ to sanctions.