Sanctions Risk Pushing Russia Away From Talks, Rubio Says
President Donald Trump thinks Russia will likely walk away from Ukraine peace talks if the US threatens more sanctions, according to his top diplomat, supporting the White House's decision not to pressure Moscow despite its resistance to a ceasefire.
'If you start threatening sanctions, the Russians will stop talking,' Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Tuesday. 'And there's value in us being able to talk to them and drive them to get to the table.'
Rubio's comments came when pressured by Senator Chris Coons, Democrat from Delaware, on whether the administration plans to slap more sanctions on Russia or send more arms to Ukraine.
Trump's efforts to push President Vladimir Putin to a ceasefire took a hit Monday after a direct phone call between the two leaders resulted in the US stepping back from direct engagement and signaling the White House wasn't ready to slap new sanctions on Moscow.
The outcome disappointed many European allies, who had expected Washington to take a harder line after Trump in recent weeks demanded a 30-day ceasefire and threatened further actions. That could include allowing passage of a bipartisan bill prepared by Senator Lindsey Graham that would enact 'bone-crushing' new sanctions.
'It would be helpful if the United States slammed its fist on the table — if that much-discussed sanctions package presented by the senators could be adopted,' French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said in an interview with France Inter earlier Tuesday.
'Everyone understands that he will pursue his colonial war to the very end unless we put a stop to it,' he said, referring to Putin.
On Tuesday, the European Union approved its latest sanctions package against Russia, targeting nearly 200 shadow fleet ships as well as addressing hybrid threats and human rights.
'More sanctions on Russia are in the works,' the bloc's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said on X. 'The longer Russia wages war, the tougher our response.'
To be sure, Rubio told senators Tuesday that Trump is 'fully aware' that he has sanctions options he can still pursue.
'The president is very committed to ending the dying, ending the bloodshed, and he wants to preserve as long as he possibly can the opportunity to influence both sides,' he said.
Later in the day, during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee meeting, Rubio said he expects Russia to present a broad 'term sheet' as soon as this week, which the administration will then determine is 'realistic' or not.
Asked about further sanctions during an Oval Office event on Tuesday, Trump said: 'That's going to be my determination. That's going to be nobody else's determination.'
'We'll see how Russia behaves,' he said.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hindustan Times
13 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
US announces visa restrictions for central American government officials
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday announced visa restrictions for several unnamed Central American government officials he said were connected to Cuban medical mission programs that include elements of forced labor and the exploitation of Cuban workers. Rubio did not name the officials nor the countries they are from. "These steps promote accountability for those who support and perpetuate these exploitative practices," he said in a statement. "The Cuban labor export program abuses the participants, enriches the corrupt Cuban regime, and deprives everyday Cubans of essential medical care that they desperately need in their homeland." Cuba's foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Havana has for decades rejected such accusations. Rubio in February expanded a visa restriction policy to target Cuban officials believed to be tied to a labor program that sends Cuban workers overseas, particularly healthcare workers. Cuba's health service generates major export earnings by sending doctors and health workers around the world. Since its 1959 leftist revolution, Cuba has dispatched an "army of white coats" to disaster sites and disease outbreaks around the world in the name of solidarity. In the last decade, they have fought cholera in Haiti and Ebola in West Africa. But Cuba has also exported doctors on more routine missions in exchange for cash or goods in recent decades, an increasingly critical source of hard currency in a nation suffering a deep economic crisis. The United States and Cuba have had a strained relationship since Fidel Castro took over in the 1959 revolution, and a US trade embargo has been in place for decades. Rubio, a former US senator and the son of immigrants who came to Florida from Cuba in the 1950s, has long opposed more normal relations with Havana, dating back to the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama. He has signaled a tougher stance on the communist-run island, reversing a last-minute effort by the Biden administration to loosen sanctions on long-time foe Cuba and complicating money transfers to the island.
Hindustan Times
17 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
Hegseth will skip a meeting on organizing military aid to Ukraine in a first for the US
WASHINGTON — For the first time since the U.S. created an international group to coordinate military aid to Ukraine three years ago, America's Pentagon chief will not be in attendance when more than 50 other defense leaders meet Wednesday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who returned from a national security conference in Singapore on Sunday, will not arrive in Brussels until Wednesday evening, after the Ukraine Defense Contact Group's meeting is over. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss scheduling details, confirmed that Hegseth also will not participate by video conference. It is the latest in a series of steps that the U.S. has taken to distance itself from the Ukraine war effort. And it comes on the heels of French President Emmanuel Macron's warning at the security conference last weekend that the U.S. and others risk a dangerous double standard if their concentration on a potential conflict with China is done at the cost of abandoning Ukraine. France and other NATO nations are concerned that the U.S. is considering withdrawing troops from Europe to shift them to the Indo-Pacific. Macron said abandoning Ukraine would eventually erode U.S. credibility in deterring any potential conflict with China over Taiwan. Hegseth's predecessor, Lloyd Austin, created the group after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Since then, more than 50 member nations have collectively provided Ukraine with some $126 billion in weapons and military assistance, including over $66.5 billion from the U.S. Under Austin's leadership, the U.S. served as chair of the group, and he and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff attended monthly meetings, which were both in person and by video. Hegseth has upended that position by stepping away from a leadership role, providing no new military aid and now abandoning the gathering altogether. During his first meeting with the group and a subsequent NATO defense ministers gathering in Brussels in February, Hegseth warned that Ukraine should abandon its NATO bid and its push to reclaim all Russian-occupied territory. And he signaled that President Donald Trump is determined to get Europe to assume most of the financial and military responsibilities for Ukraine's defense. Since Trump took office, there have been no new announcements of U.S. military or weapons aid to Ukraine. Hegseth also turned leadership of the group over to Germany and the United Kingdom. While he will not attend Wednesday's session, Gen. Christopher Cavoli, head of U.S. European Command and NATO's supreme allied commander, will be there. In Washington, meanwhile, a senior Ukrainian delegation led by First Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Yulia Svyrydenko is in town for talks about defense, sanctions and postwar recovery, said Andrii Yermak, the head of Ukraine's presidential office. The Ukrainians met with U.S. special envoys Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg, discussing recent talks with the Russians and conditions on the battlefield, Yermak posted on social media. Svyrydenko and Yermak also are expected to meet with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other officials Wednesday. Associated Press writer Tara Copp in Washington contributed to this report.
Hindustan Times
17 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
US judge says prisons must provide gender-affirming care for trans inmates
A US judge on Tuesday ruled the US Bureau of Prisons must keep providing transgender inmates gender-affirming care, despite an executive order President Donald Trump signed on his first day back in office to halt funding for such care. US District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, D.C., allowed a group of more than 2,000 transgender inmates in federal prisons to pursue a lawsuit challenging the order as a class action. He ordered the Bureau of Prisons to provide them with hormone therapy and accommodations such as clothing and hair-removal devices while the lawsuit plays out. The ruling does not require the bureau to provide surgical care related to gender transitions. White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said the Trump administration expects to ultimately prevail in the legal dispute. "The District Court's decision allowing transgender women, aka MEN, in women's prisons fundamentally makes women less safe and ignores the biological truth that there are only two genders," Fields said in an email. The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the inmates, said the ruling was "a critical reminder to the Trump administration that trans people, like all people, have constitutional rights that don't simply disappear because the president has decided to wage an ideological battle." About 2,230 transgender inmates are housed in federal custodial facilities and halfway houses, according to the US Department of Justice. About two-thirds of them, 1,506, are transgender women, most of whom are housed in men's prisons. The named plaintiffs, two transgender men and one transgender woman, sued the Trump administration in March to challenge Trump's January 20 executive order aimed at combating what the administration called "gender ideology extremism." The executive order directed the federal government to only recognize two, biologically distinct sexes, male and female; and house transgender women in men's prisons. It also ordered the bureau to stop spending any money on "any medical procedure, treatment, or drug for the purpose of conforming an inmate's appearance to that of the opposite sex." Lamberth, appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan, said in Tuesday's ruling that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their lawsuit because the bureau did not perform any analysis before cutting off treatment that its own medical staff had previously deemed to be medically appropriate for the inmates. Even if it had extensively studied the issue before deciding to stop gender-affirming care, the decision might still violate the US Constitution's Eighth Amendment's protections against "cruel and unusual" punishment, Lamberth wrote. The Department of Justice had argued that the judge should defer to the policy decision of a democratically elected president, but Lamberth said a functioning democracy requires respect for "all duly enacted laws," including those that blocked the executive branch from acting in an "arbitrary and capricious" manner. Democratic self-governance "does not mean blind submission to the whims of the most recent election-victor," Lamberth wrote. The executive order said it was meant to promote the "dignity, safety, and wellbeing of women, and to stop the spread of "gender ideology" which denies "the immutable biological reality of sex." But the inmates receiving hormone treatments had little interest in promoting any ideology, and were instead taking "measures to lessen the personal anguish caused by their gender dysphoria," Lamberth wrote. (Reporting by Dietrich Knauth, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Richard Chang)
