U.S. President Barack Obama has expressed his concern that international pressure on Russia may ease following the successful elections in Ukraine, and has said that during this week's visit to Europe he will urge U.S. allies to maintain a hard line against Moscow, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“What we don’t want is for everybody to exhale, ‘the election went well, now we’re all done,'” the newspaper quoted a senior Obama administration official as saying.
During the G-7 summit in Brussels, Obama will press world leaders to agree on a new threshold for imposing sanctions on sectors of Russia’s economy, The Wall Street Journal said.
Earlier, the U.S. and Germany had agreed to impose such sanctions had Russia disrupted Ukraine’s election.
The newspaper expressed doubt that the G-7 countries would agree on the new triggers for moving to new sanctions against Russia.
At the same time, Obama will call on the European leaders to keep the existing sanctions against Russia in place.
