Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has accused the United States of sabotaging efforts to improve bilateral relations and of undermining negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
“Despite all the statements by the Trump administration about the need to end the war … it does not challenge all the laws that Joe Biden passed to punish Russia after the start of the special military operation,” Lavrov said in an interview with TV BRICS published on Monday.
“In practice, the opposite is happening: new sanctions are being imposed, a war is being waged against tankers on the high seas, in violation of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea,” he said, referring to U.S. forces recently seizing ships belonging to a so-called “shadow fleet” of oil tankers.
In October, the United States sanctioned Russia’s largest oil producers, Lukoil and Rosneft, marking the first major sanctions against Moscow since Trump took office last year. Lukoil was forced to sell most of its foreign assets following the move.
Trump had promised to end the war in Ukraine by day one of his presidency, but efforts to broker a peace deal stalled nearly as soon as they began. The president, meanwhile, has said he hopes for improved relations with Russia, including possible business deals between the two countries.
The sanctions against Lukoil and Rosneft came after Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in August in Alaska, where, according to Kremlin officials, the two sides reached certain “understandings” on steps toward ending the war in Ukraine.
“Beyond what they claimed to offer on Ukraine … we also see no positive outlook on the economic front,” Lavrov said in the TV BRICS interview. “Washington, in our view, is seeking control over global energy supply routes serving major economies across multiple continents.”
He said Russia remains open to cooperation with the U.S. but argued that “the Americans themselves are creating artificial obstacles on this path.”
Russian, Ukrainian and American officials have met for two rounds of peace negotiations in Abu Dhabi since the start of the year. So far, those efforts have failed to produce a compromise on the sensitive issue of territory.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said this weekend that the United States was pressing both countries to end the war by June.
