Tabnak – Despite the initial expectations that Donald Trump’s presidency in the US would lead to a rapprochement between Washington and Moscow, tensions between the two sides have been on the rise, on issues ranging from Syria to China.
In this vein, Russia has warned the United States against “playing with fire” by imposing new sections against the country, saying Washington will never succeed in “dictating terms” to Moscow.
On Thursday, the US State Department announced it has added the names further 33 Russians to its sanctions blacklist, bringing the total number of sanctioned individuals to 72 people.
Reacting to the move, Russian Foreign Ministry issued a strongly worded statement on Friday, warning Washington not to play with fire since “it can become dangerous."
“It would be good for them to remember there is such a concept as global stability which they are thoughtlessly undermining by whipping up tensions in Russian-American ties," said deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov.
Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says the United States is playing unfairly and imposing sanctions on buyers of Russian weapons, and on people associated with the Russian military, in order to squeeze out competitors in the global arms market.
"This is unfair competition, dishonest competition, an attempt to use non-market methods that run counter to norms and principles of international trade to squeeze the main competitor of US makers out of the markets," Peskov said on Friday.
The remarks came after the United States slapped sanctions on a Chinese military agency on Thursday for buying defense equipment, including fighter jets and missile systems from Russia.
At the same time, it seems that US-Russia disagreements regarding Syria are becoming more serious as well. In this vein, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says the United States' control over the eastern bank of the Euphrates River poses the biggest threat to Syria's territorial integrity.
Lavrov also said that Moscow and Ankara had agreed on the borders of a demilitarized buffer zone to separate Syrian government forces from militant groups in the northwestern province of Idlib and that terrorists of Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, should leave the zone by mid-October.
The United States and its allies have been involved in airstrikes on Syria since 2014, claiming they seek to root out the ISIS terrorists. The strikes have had no approval from the Syrian government or a mandate from the United Nations.
All in all, it seems that the tensions between Moscow and Washington are just becoming more serious and multi-layered, with the prospects for reaching a kind of understanding over the contended issues growing dimmer.
In an interview with Russian newspaper Pravda published on August 28, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that his country will take retaliatory action against the United States’ anti-Moscow sanctions. “We will continue to act calmly and pragmatically, reacting to all attacks in accordance with the principle of reciprocity,” Lavrov said.
