Congressional compromise on sanctions repudiates Russia and curbs Trump
The House of Representatives plans to pass a compromise bill Tuesday that toughens sanctions on Russia for its alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential election — and makes it harder for President Trump to ease them.
The vote follows a bipartisan agreement reached over the weekend between House and Senate negotiators and comes amid growing scrutiny by Congress and a special prosecutor of possible links between Russian officials and the Trump campaign.
Trump had objected to the bill's limits on his ability to lift or ease the sanctions. The Senate passed an earlier version of the bill 98-2.
“This demonstrates that despite the president’s intentions, American policy toward an aggressive Kremlin is becoming stronger,” said John Herbst, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine and Uzbekistan, two former Soviet republics.
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Congress strikes deal on Russia sanctions, despite Trump objection
Senate already voted 98-2 for Russia sanctions bill, what happens next in House is unclear
Here are a few things to know about the bill:
What it does
The bill will punish Russia for meddling in the U.S. presidential elections and for its military aggression in Ukraine and Syria. Russia has not done enough to implement a cease-fire in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists are fighting government troops, according to the State Department.
The bill will codify sanctions imposed by President Barack Obama over Russia's alleged interference in the presidential election to aid Trump. That is the firm conclusion of the U.S. intelligence community, but Trump complains that the allegation is not backed up by evidence and is being promoted by critics to discredit his election.
The sanctions, which primarily target Russian oil and gas projects with companies based in the U.S., Germany and other countries, will be harder for Trump to lift because he'll need congressional approval.
White House reaction
The White House lobbied Congress to kill or soften the bill, especially the mandate requiring a congressional review if the president attempts to ease or end the sanctions. But those efforts had “zero influence,” said Herbst, who’s now an analyst at the Atlantic Council think tank. The reason: “All the questions related to (the Trump camp’s) interactions with the Russians.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told ABC News on Sunday that the White House now supports the bill after a few changes, "and will continue working with the House and Senate to put those tough sanctions in place on Russia until the situation in Ukraine is fully resolved, and it certainly isn't right now."
Trump on Sunday tweeted his frustration over the investigation into links between his campaign and Russia: “As the phony Russian Witch Hunt continues, two groups are laughing at this excuse for a lost election taking hold, Democrats and Russians!”
Impact on gas industry
The bill targets Russian gas pipelines in a way that will hurt Russia’s No. 1 export and Nord Stream 2, a pipeline project to carry Russian gas across the Baltic Sea to Germany. The U.S. natural gas industry, which has begun exporting liquefied natural gas to Europe, stands to benefit from blocking new Russian gas pipelines.
The pipeline’s goal is to bypass Ukraine, where Russia seized territory and supported a separatist movement after Ukraine's new government sought closer ties with the European Union, Herbst said. Ukraine, almost completely dependent on Russian gas in 2014, restructured its energy imports and bought no Russian gas last year. Nord Stream 2 would deprive Ukraine of significant transit fees it currently charges for gas destined for other European destinations. Belarus and Poland will also be negatively impacted by the Russian-German project, Herbst said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who sees the pipeline project as a boon for German industry, expressed her opposition to the sanctions in June.
Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters Monday that Moscow has “an extremely negative view” of the bill because it threatens a number of large-scale projects with European countries.
Impact on Trump’s Russia policy
The bill would make it harder for Trump to achieve his goal of improved relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Derek Chollet, who helped set European defense policy as an assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs under Obama.
Trump and Putin have spoken about finding ways to cooperate on counterterrorism and ending Syria's six-year-long civil war. After the two leaders met at the Group of 20 summit in Hamburg earlier this month, officials from both countries announced a regional cease-fire in Syria.
Impact on Russia
Steve Pifer, a U.S. ambassador to Ukraine under President George W. Bush, said the bill is unlikely to have the desired impact on curbing Russian behavior.
Pifer noted that Congress passed the Jackson-Vanik amendment to the Trade Act of 1974, which required congressional approval before the president could remove sanctions on the Soviet Union over its treatment of religious minorities, especially Jews.
The amendment became moot after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, but it took more than a decade to be repealed, and then it was replaced by the Magnitzky Act, which punishes Russia over human rights violations and corruption, Pifer said.
“From the Russian perspective, (the new bill) makes the sanctions much harder to lift, even if the Russians were to meet the goal of the sanctions,” he said. "To the extent it puts pressure on Russia to implement the (Ukraine cease-fire) agreement, Russians in Moscow might say 'Why bother?'"