But Moscow didn’t get what it wanted. During Trump’s term, the United States expelled 60 Russian diplomats in response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Britain, opened the door to sales of lethal weapons to Ukraine (something the Obama administration did not do), and sanctioned a slew of Russian individuals and entities. While Trump signed a 2017 sanctions bill only reluctantly in the face of a veto-proof majority, the administration deployed sanctions authorities to target Russian military intelligence officers, employees of the Internet Research Agency and its mastermind Yevgeniy Prigozhin, and Russian oligarchs and their holdings. Sanctions against Oleg Deripaska and his aluminum conglomerate, EN+, eventually forced the company to restructure its board by adding British and American directors (after which the United States rolled the sanctions back). Perhaps most irritating to the Kremlin, the administration sanctioned companies involved in the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline — a critical energy project that, if completed, would allow Russia to increase its gas exports to Europe while bypassing the pipeline running through Ukraine.

Source: Washington Post July 30, 2021 09:56 UTC