Russia Declares Open Trade War With the United States

The new US sanctions against Russia will end all hopes for a better relationship with Trump's administration, said Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Medvedev adds that the new sanctions mean an open trade war, the Norwegian news agency NTB reports.

The statement comes following U.S. President Donald Trump's signing of sanctions against Russia into law yesterday, in reaction to alleged Russian hacking of institutions related to the U.S. presidential election, according to two White House officials cited by the Associated Press.

Tensions between the U.S. and Russia have escalated since the U.S. Congress passed the sanctions last week. Moscow later ordered the U.S. Embassy to slash its diplomatic staff by hundreds of people in response.

Russia held back on introducing sanctions “for quite some time”, but lost hope after Washington’s “unprovoked move”, President Vladimir Putin said in a state television broadcast Sunday.

Reacting to the news of the signing, the head of the Russian Federation Council’s international affairs committee Konstantin Kosachyov, wrote on Facebook that the only news was that Trump had “surrended” to pressure from the U.S. Congress, The Moscow Times reports this morning.