MOSCOW : Russia’s political and business leaders were quick to chalk up last week’s summit with US President Donald Trump as a victory for Vladimir Putin. Now some fear Putin may have overplayed a winning hand and are bracing for a US sanctions backlash.
The rouble fell 1.2 percent on Tuesday after two U.S. senators said in a statement they had begun working on new sanctions that would, among other things, take aim at Russian sovereign debt. It later recovered most of its losses.
While the sanctions proposed by Republican Lindsey Graham and Democrat Bob Menendez were seen by most political risk analysts as unlikely in the near term, new curbs contemplated by other U.S. lawmakers targeting the energy and metals sectors are more realistic, they say.
