The incoming US president may overturn some measures just because they were initiated by his predecessor, officials told the paper
EU officials fear that incoming US President Donald Trump will overturn some of the sanctions imposed on Russia during Joe Biden’s presidency, the Financial Times reported on Friday. Russia has been targeted by as many as 40,000 Western sanctions since 2022.
According to the British paper, officials in Brussels are reportedly concerned that Trump might reverse some of his predecessor’s decisions “simply because they were taken by Biden.”
Brussels is reportedly scrambling to analyze hundreds of sanctions and executive orders approved by Biden to assess which reversals could have the most significant impact on the bloc. Some officials also told the FT that Trump may even completely ignore EU interests when he reviews Biden’s foreign policy decisions.
“The concern is he decides to reverse things just because Biden had done them,” a source reportedly said. “We need to know how that could affect us.”
Since the outbreak of hostilities in February 2022, Biden introduced a series of consecutive restrictions, which sought to send Russia’s economy into a tailspin. In particular, the sanctions froze a significant portion of Russia’s sovereign assets, used interest generated by those funds to finance a loan for Kiev, targeted the country’s largest banks and key industries, and blacklisted numerous top officials, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
Russia has condemned the sanctions as “illegal” while labeling the asset freezes as “theft.” Putin has also said the country’s economy has been able to withstand unprecedented Western pressure, noting that it had encouraged the development of domestic industry.
Some US sanctions on Moscow predate 2022. Former US President Barack Obama targeted Russia with a raft of measures after Crimea seceded from Ukraine and joined the Russian Federation following a Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014.
During his first term, Trump largely kept the restrictions in place, with his administration introducing new sanctions against some Russian officials.
