Top Senate Republican says US sanctions on Russia waiting for White House go-ahead

WASHINGTON

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Tuesday that a new set of US sanctions on Russia are on hold until the White House gives its go ahead.

The comments were made just hours after a White House official confirmed that plans for President Donald Trump to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Hungary were put on hold. Thune on Monday had conditioned the sanctions package on the outcome of that sit-down.

"We want to put it on the floor when the White House believes it’s useful to them to get Putin to the table, and to get a deal that ends the war. So we’re prepared to act," Thune told reporters at the White House after meeting the president for lunch. "We want to do everything we can to support the president, his team's efforts and the efforts of our allies to bring this, the bloodshed to an end in a peaceful conclusion."

The sanctions package is all but certain to rapidly clear the Senate when and if it is introduced in the chamber. It currently has 85 co-sponsors in the 100-member body. All that appears lacking is a green light from the president.

Earlier Tuesday, a White House official said plans for a second summit between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin were on hold after what the official described as a "productive" call between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

On Oct. 16, following a phone call with Putin, Trump announced plans to meet the Russian president in Budapest, Hungary within two weeks, and said Lavrov and Rubio would meet this week to iron out the details for the meeting. That sit-down was also nixed, according to the official.

The reasoning for the abrupt change was not immediately clear, but Russia has since balked at Trump's insistence on a ceasefire in Ukraine that would keep in place existing frontlines in the Kremlin's over three-and-a-half-year war.

Lavrov told reporters Tuesday that the insistence on an immediate ceasefire is contradictory to prior commitments made by the Russian and American leaders during an August summit in Alaska.

The Russian foreign minister suggested that European officials urged their American counterparts to change their stance, seeking a temporary cessation rather than a lasting resolution.

In a joint statement on Tuesday, the leaders of European powers and the EU said the current line of contact should be the starting point of negotiations, and that international borders must not be changed by force.