Russia Vows Further Retaliation If US Moves Forward With Sanctions
As President Donald Trump prepares to sign the Russia sanctions legislation, which easily cleared Congress last week, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov threatened further retaliation against the US Sunday morning.
“If the US side decides to move further towards further deterioration, we will answer, we will respond in kind,” Ryabkov said on ABC’s “This Week.”
Ryabkov’s comments come after Russia demanded Friday that the United States cut its diplomatic staff in Russia and said it would seize two US diplomatic properties in a sharp response to the new sanctions bill.
The deputy foreign minister would not specify what Russia’s plans for retaliation consist of, but said that the country has “a very rich toolbox at our disposal.”
Tensions between Russia and the US over the sanctions bill come on the heels of the congressional investigations into Russian hacking into the 2016 election, which US intelligence services have said was an effort to influence the election in Trump’s favor.
