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Sanctions are part of Trump administration’s policy, says Russian diplomat

he US administration earlier imposed a second round of sanctions on Russia over the Skripal incident
US President Donald Trump REUTERS/Bryan Woolston
US President Donald Trump
© REUTERS/Bryan Woolston

MOSCOW, August 2. /TASS/. The Russian Foreign Ministry is not surprised at new US sanctions on Moscow because they are part of the Trump administration’s policy, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told RT.

"The Trump administration regularly imposes sanctions and other restrictive measures upon Russia. We have adopted ourselves to these actions of the US. I think this is part of domestic politics more than anything else," he said.

According to the senior Russian diplomat, in the United States, everything related to Russia is viewed from the standpoint of elections. Ryabkov emphasized that Moscow was determined to figure out the best ways to resist the negative consequences of US sanctions.

The US administration earlier imposed a second round of sanctions on Russia over the Skripal incident.

Skripal saga

According to London, former Russian Military Intelligence (GRU) officer Sergei Skripal, who had been convicted in Russia of spying for Great Britain and later swapped for Russian intelligence officers, and his daughter Yulia, suffered the effects of an alleged nerve agent in the British city of Salisbury on March 4, 2018. Claiming that the substance used in the attack had been a Novichok-class nerve agent developed in the Soviet Union, London rushed to accuse Russia of being involved in the incident. Moscow rejected all of the United Kingdom’s accusations, saying that neither the Soviet Union nor Russia ever had any program aimed at developing such a substance.

Chief Executive of the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down Gary Aitkenhead said later that British experts had been unable to identify the origin of the nerve agent used in the attack on the Skripals.