The Democrats always attempt to leave a mess for the next US administration when they depart, the Russian foreign minister has said
The outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden is working hard to create problems for President-elect Donald Trump before he enters the White House, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.
Lavrov made the statement at a press conference on Tuesday when asked about the new sanctions against the Russian energy industry, which Washington announced last week.
The curbs target two major petroleum producers – Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegaz – as well as their subsidiaries, including Naftna industrija Srbije (NIS), which handles deliveries of Russian oil to Serbia and neighboring European nations. Related insurance providers, as well as more than 30 oilfield service companies and over 180 vessels used to deliver Russian oil, have also been slapped with restrictions.
According to the foreign minister, the move by the Biden administration simultaneously targets Serbia, Russia, and Trump, who has expressed readiness to resume dialogue with Moscow to try to find a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine conflict.
“The Democrats have such a manner in American politics to spoil the whole thing for the next administration before the end of their mandate,” he said.
Lavrov noted that the same thing happened before Trump’s first term when outgoing Democratic President Barack Obama “banished 120 [Russian] diplomats from the US and arrested five sites of [Russian] diplomatic property” just three weeks before his successor’s inauguration.
“This whole case did not help Russian-American relations” in 2017, he added.
Regarding the Biden administration, the foreign minister suggested that after not winning reelection “from the moral point of view, you should just wait before the inauguration [of Trump on January 20]; you should understand that your people want a different kind of policy.”
