U.S. to Impose Even Further Sanctions on Russia, This Time Due to Syria
(The AEGIS Alliance) – The U.S. seeks to place new sanctions onto Russia because of chemical attack allegations by the government of Syria, Nikki Haley, United States Ambassador to the United Nations stated on Sunday.
Nikki Haley says these sanctions, that will be announced today on Monday by Steve Mnuchin the Treasury Secretary, which will be targeting businesses that supplied Damascus with equipment along with other material related to chemical weaponry.
“You will see that Russian sanctions will be coming down. Secretary Mnuchin will be announcing those on Monday, if he hasn’t already,” Haley stated to CBS’s “Face the Nation” in an interview.
This move follows airstrikes by United States, British and French forces, retaliating for an alleged chemical weapons attack by Syrians on April 7th in Douma, which is a formerly rebel-held town close to Damascus, with claim that over 40 people had been killed.
In an apparent response to Nikki Haley, a senior Russian lawmaker made a warning on Sunday that these latest sanctions will hurt the United States and Europe more than they will Moscow.
Deputy head of the defense committee of Russia’s upper house of parliament, Evgeny Serebrennikov, says Moscow is prepared for these latest penalties.
“They are hard for us, but will do more damage to the USA and Europe,” RIA news agency quoted Serebrennikov as stating this.
U.S. military officials say the air strikes on Saturday in Syria destroyed ‘the heart’ of the residual chemical weapons capability of Syria.
The strikes sought avoiding contacting Russian forces in Syria.
But U.S. officials are blaming Russia for failing to keep control of its Syrian ally, as the guarantor of a 2013 agreement for dismantling chemical weapons in Syria.
This agreement was brokered by Moscow in order to avert retaliatory strikes by the U.S. in the wake of the sarin gas attack in the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta suburbs of Damascus in August of 2013 that reportedly killed over 1,400 civilians.
Damascus denies any responsibility for all the gas attacks.
“I think everyone knows that we sent a strong message and our hope is that they listen to it,” Haley stated about the air strikes.
She continues, “With the political and diplomatic actions that we’re taking now, we wanted … Iran and Russia to know that we meant business and that they were going to be feeling the pain from this as well.”
Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
