Media reported on EU concerns about Trump's lifting of sanctions against Russia

The European Union (EU) is worried that US President-elect Donald Trump, after taking office, may lift the anti-Russian sanctions imposed by incumbent US President Joe Biden. This was reported by the British newspaper Financial Times (FT) on January 10.

According to its data, the association fears that Trump will annul the decisions on restrictions only because they were made by his predecessor. How the lifting of sanctions will affect his European allies, the American leader-elect is unlikely to think about. At the same time, as the newspaper emphasizes, the rejection of restrictions has the potential to overturn the current situation in international trade and relations.

Against this backdrop, senior European Commission (EC) officials have ordered a review of Biden's executive orders on sanctions that Trump could lift, with content ranging from trade to cybersecurity. The goal of this work is to understand which of these restrictions, if abandoned, would have the biggest impact on the EC. The association wants to keep the restrictions in place in order to use them to its advantage in possible negotiations with Russia to resolve the Ukrainian conflict.

FT points out that the EU is acting before Trump's inauguration in a big hurry, and this shows how unpredictable the actions of the US president-elect are for the US' European allies.

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On January 9, Reuters, citing an unnamed official, reported that Biden may announce a new package of anti-Russian sanctions this week. There are no details yet, but the new list of restrictions is supposedly needed to strengthen Ukraine's negotiating position.

The New York Times reported on December 11, 2024, that Trump may unblock Moscow 's frozen assets and lift anti-Russian sanctions, which includes changing the terms of the loan to Kiev allocated by Washington under Biden.

At the same time, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev suggested on November 22 that Trump, upon taking office, is unlikely to lift the anti-Russian restrictions at once, especially since he had previously insisted on the introduction of some of them himself.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Nov. 7 that the volume of Western anti-Russian sanctions is unparalleled in history, but that they have not dealt Russia "a crushing blow from which it will not be able to recover." He emphasized that the world actually needs the Russian Federation, and any decisions either in Washington or Brussels cannot affect that.

Western countries increased sanctions pressure on the Russian Federation after the start of the special operation to protect civilians in Donbass, which was announced on February 24, 2022.