Trump says Putin to request sanctions lifting

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Monday he expects his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to request the lifting of US sanctions during an upcoming phone call where he will raise concerns over plunging world oil prices.

"Yeah, he'll probably ask for that," Trump told Fox News.

Trump did not say what his response would be, noting that he had put sanctions on Russia but adding: "They don't like that. Frankly we should be able to get along."

The two were due to talk "shortly",  he said, and Trump said he would raise objections over a Russian-Saudi price war driving down world oil prices and "really hurting" the US energy industry.

"We don’t want to have a dead industry," Trump said. "This is a fight between Saudi Arabia and Russia ... and they both went crazy."

"I never thought I’d be saying that maybe we have to have an oil [prices] increase, because we do," Trump said.

The bulk of US sanctions against Russia were imposed over Moscow's annexation of Crimea in Ukraine and what US investigators say was a concerted attempt to interfere in the 2016 presidential election won by Trump.

Last Thursday, Putin told G-20 leaders during a conference call that he wanted a moratorium on sanctions as a "matter of life and death" during the global coronavirus outbreak.

In the comments Putin did not specify which countries he was talking about but Russia is being hit hard by the economic fallout from coronavirus and the parallel oil price drop.

Another point of US-Russian contention is Venezuela, where Washington, supported by dozens of other countries, has been trying unsuccessfully to promote the toppling of leftist president Nicholas Maduro. Russia is one of the few countries propping up his government.

"We may discuss that too," Trump said.

Russian state oil company Rosneft said on Saturday it is pulling out of Venezuela and argued that US sanctions on a Rosneft subsidiary -- imposed as part of Washington's attempt to cripple the Maduro government's revenue sources -- should now be lifted.

However, Russia remains a key partner to Caracas.

 'Every country does it'

Trump has often resisted punishing Moscow, which denies meddling in US politics, but his hand on imposing sanctions was forced by his own Republican Party in Congress, which sees the Putin government as hostile.

The warm relationship between Trump and Putin -- seen by many Western capitals as an increasingly authoritarian leader responsible for assassinations of opponents at home and abroad -- has been a constant source of controversy in the United States.

In his Fox interview, Trump dismissed reports that Russia and China are seeking to exploit the coronavirus disruption by planting disinformation aimed at putting the United States in a bad light.

"They do it and we do it," he said, calling The Washington Post newspaper, which recently reported on the issue, "fake".

"Every country does it," he said.

Trump then questioned why Russia was considered an enemy by many in the West. As he has often in the past, he again also cast doubt on what was for decades the rock solid transatlantic alliance between the United States and Germany.

"I'm not saying they're babies, I'm not saying they're perfect," he said of the Russians.

"But you know they also fought World War II, they lost 50 million people. They were our partner and now we don't talk to Russia, we talk to Germany."

"Germany was the enemy and Germany is like this wonderful thing. Well, Germany takes advantage of us on trade for years. They pay far too little in NATO."