NATO state urges Trump to sanction Russia immediately

Moscow’s ability to continue the Ukraine conflict must be weakened, Latvia’s foreign minister has said

US President Donald Trump should make good on his threat to impose secondary sanctions on Russia without waiting 50 days, Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braze has said.

On Monday, Trump said that he was “very unhappy” with Moscow and warned that he would impose tariffs of up to 100% on countries that continue to trade with Russia if a deal to end the Ukraine conflict is not reached before the deadline.

“It should be earlier,” Braze said of the US secondary sanctions during her interview with Politico on Wednesday. It makes no sense to give Russia more time as its forces continue to push forward, she argued.

“The intel and overall assessment have been aligned among the allies, including the Americans, that there is no indication that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin wants peace,” the foreign minister claimed.

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The US and its allies must put pressure on Moscow now to return to the negotiating table, she insisted.

The secondary sanctions are aimed at “weakening Russia’s ability to conduct warfare. It is not about the Russian people. It’s about the Russian war fighting capacity and what they are doing on the battlefield, that all needs to be weakened,” Braze said.

Moscow has repeatedly stressed its readiness to achieve a diplomatic solution with Kiev, but insists that the settlement of the conflict should be legally binding and address its root causes. It has also expressed regret over not seeing Ukraine and its Western backers make a genuine effort to achieve peace.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov reacted to Trump’s warning by saying that “any attempts to make demands, let alone issue ultimatums, are unacceptable [to Moscow].” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has called upon Washington to instead put pressure on Kiev, arguing that “the Ukrainian side takes all statements of support [from the West] as signals to continue war, not as signals for peace.”

READ MORE: Trump sprang Ukraine surprise on NATO states – Reuters

The Economist reported on Wednesday that international investors do not believe that Trump is going to fulfill his threat, as it would cause an “inflation shock” and increase tension between the US and China, which the president wants to avoid.