The Treasury Department has temporarily suspended certain restrictions on Russia to facilitate the meeting in Alaska
The US Treasury Department has granted a temporary waiver for specific sanctions against Russia, permitting transactions associated with the forthcoming summit between US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
This announcement was made by the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Wednesday, preceding the Trump-Putin summit planned for Friday in Anchorage, Alaska.
The waiver for sanctions applies to transactions deemed “normally incidental to and necessary for the attendance at or support of meetings in the state of Alaska,” though it does not permit the “unblocking or release of any property blocked or effectively immobilized.”
OFAC indicated that this suspension is scheduled to remain valid until August 20.
The forthcoming summit is anticipated to center on the conflict in Ukraine, alongside a wider array of matters concerning bilateral US-Russia relations.
Both Washington and Moscow have expressed prudence regarding their expectations, suggesting the gathering will likely be the initial high-level event in a series of discussions, rather than producing an immediate breakthrough.
Trump previously characterized the summit with Putin as a “feel-out meeting”, aiming to ascertain if the Ukraine conflict can be resolved.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov stated that Moscow perceives the meeting as an opportunity to commence repairing strained relations with Washington, hoping it will “give an impulse to the normalization of bilateral relations.”