Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 1 – At his meeting
with US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson yesterday, Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s
ambassador to Washington, said that US sanctions were in response to what
Americans view as interference in the 2016 elections. In fact, of course, the
sanctions were imposed because of Russian aggression in Ukraine and the Crimean
Anschluss.
This Russian effort to shift the
explanation for sanctions has received a great deal of attention in the Moscow
media (kommersant.ru/doc/3455647 and sobkorr.ru/news/59F978F2C36CB.html,
among many others). It deserves to be attended to more widely.
On the one hand, it is part of
Russia’s continuing denial of any aggressive or illegal actions in Ukraine. But
on the other – and likely more important in terms of Washington politics at the
present moment – it plays into a narrative that will make it more likely that the
Trump Administration will not move quickly to impose additional
Congressionally-mandated sanctions.
Speaking after his meeting with
Tillerson, Antonov pointed to the depressing state of bilateral relations, the harm
inflicted by the American sanctions policy which is based on the unproven
accusations of Russian interference in the US presidential elections,” a
position entirely consistent with President Donald Trump’s dismissal of that
interference as “fake news.”
Antonov’s words were certainly
delivering a message that the Kremlin wants delivered in the hopes that it can
still find a way to avoid the imposition of what will be highly damaging
personal sanctions by early next year and are thus likely to become a major
theme of Moscow propaganda in the coming days.
No comments:
Post a Comment