WASHINGTON, October 17. /TASS/. US President Donald Trump believes that Washington may not try to toughen anti-Russian sanctions, once again mentioning his Thursday’s phone talk with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

When asked about the possibility of adopting a Congress bill that toughens sanctions on Russia, Trump said: "I'm not against anything. I'm just saying it may not be perfect timing."

Commenting on remarks made by Republican Majority Leader of the US Senate John Thune, who said the time has come to work on the bill, Trump said: "We're going to see. He doesn't know about the call [with Putin] yet. I'm going to speak to him later, and it [the adoption of the bill] was subject to what I wanted to do. And so we'll see what happens."

"This may be such a productive call that…" Trump said, but failed to finish the sentence. "We want to get peace," he added.

"I'm going to speak to him [Thune] and the [House of Representatives] speaker, Mike Johnson, I'll speak to them a little bit later, and I'll tell them about this, and we'll make the right determination," the US president said.

Bill on sanctions

The bill was introduced in early April by a bipartisan group of senators led by Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina (who is included on Russia’s list of terrorists and extremists), and Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut. The proposal includes measures such as secondary sanctions against Russia’s trading partners, for example, tariffs of 500% on imports to the US from countries that purchase oil, gas, uranium, and other goods from Russia.

Senator Rand Paul (Republican, Kentucky) recently warned in an op-ed for the Responsible Statecraft website that the US would be the country most harmed by the potential passage of this legislation, both economically and strategically.