The White House has announced that President Trump has imposed a new round of sanctions against Russia on Friday. The sanctions are nominally about the March 2018 Skripal poisoning in Britain, which the US has already issued sanctions over.



According to spokesman Hogan Gidley, the new sanctions are being imposed because of the last round of sanctions. In the previous sanctions the US demanded Russia offer them assurances that they’d stop poisoning people.



Russia never made any such assurances, since they denied poisoning Skripal in the first place. But not admitting guilt and offering the US promises, the US felt the need to impose another round of sanctions, which are probably going to set the stage for more future sanctions for the same reason.



Officials claim Russia is “required” to offer the US assurances about poisonings under US law, and the White House insists these new sanctions prove that President Trump is harder on Russia than anyone else has ever been at any time.





Author: Jason Ditz Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com. View all posts by Jason Ditz