As US President Donald Trump hit Russia's two biggest oil companies with sanctions in his latest sharp policy shift on the Ukraine war, the move has prompted
a sharp response from Moscow. Russia's deputy chairman of security council, Dmitry Medvedev, called the United States Russia's "enemy" and said on Thursday that the move amounted to an "act of war". Medvedev further remarked that "peacemaker" Trump is on a path of war with Russia by siding with "loony Europe". "The US is our enemy, and their talkative 'peacemaker' has now fully embarked on the warpath with Russia," Medvedev wrote on Telegram. "The decisions taken are an act of war against Russia. And now Trump has fully aligned himself with loony Europe," he added. On the other hand, Maria Zakharova, spokesperson of Russia's foreign ministry, told reporters in Moscow that the root causes of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine need to be resolved and that their goals in Ukraine remain unchanged.
US sanctions Russia's largest oil companies
The US has sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia's two largest oil companies, as the Trump administration increased pressure on the Kremlin to negotiate an end to its war against Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked the United States for the new sanctions, saying they were "very important" but that more pressure would be needed on Moscow.
On Wednesday, Trump had shared that the planned Budapest summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin was off because he did not believe it would achieve the outcome he wanted and complained that his many "good conversations" with him did not "go anywhere". After an August summit with Putin in Alaska, Trump dropped his demand for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and embraced Moscow's preferred option of going straight to negotiating an overall peace settlement.
"We cancelled the meeting with President Putin — it just didn’t feel right to me," Trump told reporters at the White House. "It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I cancelled it, but we'll do it in the future."
The sanctions have prompted global oil prices to rise by 3% on Thursday.
(With agency inputs)
