President Trump on Sunday defended his decision to ease sanctions against Russia as part of ongoing peace negotiations. He said he was making "great progress" in a peace deal and hinted at hostage negotiations. These steps reverse five years of sanctions, though many lawmakers have criticized his recent policy changes.
The president on Sunday justified his reversal of almost five years of sanctions against Russia as part of peace negotiations. He did not name any hostage.
President Trump, defending his decision to ease tariffs and other sanctions against Russia, said on Sunday that he was making "great progress" in a peace deal with the Kremlin and suggested for the first time that the process included "hostage negotiations."
He did not specify whose release he was seeking. But the only American now categorized by the State Department as "wrongfully detained" in Russia is Stephen Hubbard, a Michigan teacher who was seized from his home in Ukraine just months after Russia invaded that country in February 2022 and was charged with being a mercenary. He was sentenced to more than six years in a penal colony, on charges that the United States has said are fabricated.
"My decision on Russia is a very simple one," Mr. Trump wrote on social media, an apparent reference to his move late on Friday to neutralize the sanctions resolution that he had signed only a few weeks earlier. "I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don't want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table."
Until Sunday, Mr. Trump had said little about the remarkable, rapid-fire steps he has taken over the past 10 days to side with the Russians in a conflict that has now gone on longer than World War I. Those steps amount to the reversal of nearly five years of sanctions following President Vladimir V. Putin's decision to invade Ukraine.
In that time period Mr. Trump has announced that the United States will buy diesel fuel from Russia -- though the announced purchases are far too small to have a significant effect on prices, despite Mr. Trump's claims -- and that he will waive imposing tariffs on Russia under a newly signed law named for its chief proponent, Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who died in July.
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Both decisions have been criticized by U.S. lawmakers, including fellow Republicans. Senator Darline Graham of South Carolina, who was appointed to her brother's seat and is now running for a full term, gently disagreed on Saturday with Mr. Trump's decision on the sanctions law, saying that she "would choose to put the pressure on Russia to end the war and get gas prices down."
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