NEW YORK, April 10. /TASS/. Washington should try to tighten sanctions on Moscow to make Russia to cooperate with the United States, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said in an interview with NBC News.
When asked "what do you do to Russians if they are not at all interested in a political solution, how do you encourage them to the table," Sanders said that "you may make them an offer they can’t refuse that means tightening the screws on them, dealing with sanctions, telling them that we need their help, that they got to come to the table," Sanders said.
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According to him, "getting the United States involved in a perpetual warfare, sending troops to Syria will just continue the process of money going down a rabbit hole."
"I think ultimately the solution has got to be political," the senator concluded.
On April 7, at the direction of US President Donald Trump, the US forces fired 59 Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAM) on a Syrian military air base located in the Homs Governorate. The attack came as a response to the alleged use of chemical weapons in the Idlib Governorate on April 4. The US authorities believe that the airstrike on Idlib was launched from that air base.
The Russian and Syrian militaries denied their involvement in the attack. Russia’s Defense Ministry later said that on April 4, the Syrian air force had delivered an airstrike on the eastern outskirts of Khan Shaykhun to destroy militant facilities used to produce chemical bombs. These bombs were sent to Iraq and were previously used in Aleppo.
Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow considered this attack to be an act of aggression against a sovereign state. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in turn, said that the aggression was carried out under a false pretext.