Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday condemned U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to lift sanctions on Russia, saying the move “rewards” Vladimir Putin and could help Moscow plan a winter blackout of Ukraine’s power grid.
Trump signed an executive order that suspended the Lindsey Graham Act, a U.S. law that had targeted Russia’s energy and defence sectors, the Kremlin’s “shadow fleet” of tankers and the president himself. The act was intended to apply “truly effective pressure” on Russia to end the war, Zelensky said, adding that it could still “have helped enormously.”
The waiver came the same day that Russia carried out a large-scale strike on 15 critical power‑generation facilities, a move that the Ukrainian leader described as “one of the largest attacks on Ukraine’s energy grid.” He warned that Moscow was “trying to leave millions of our people without electricity and heating” ahead of winter.
Russian air strikes that day killed at least two people, one in Kherson and another in Sumy, and wounded 22 others, including two children, according to Ukrainian officials. The attacks followed a week of intensified Russian shelling of Kyiv and other cities.
Several Russian officials celebrated the sanction waiver. Kremlin spokesman Kirill Dmitriev called it “an important and truly historic moment,” arguing that the Lindsey Graham Act would have caused “serious damage first and foremost to the U.S. economy and global markets.”
European leaders, meanwhile, urged continued and increased support for Ukraine. At a Brussels summit, European Council chief Antonio Costa said it was “no time to withdraw the support to Ukraine” or to relieve Russia’s sanctions, calling for “more pressure” on Moscow.
Zelensky, who had been urging allies to keep financing Ukraine’s defence, said the United States must not “stop this” and that the war’s continuation is a direct consequence of easing pressure on Russia. The sanction waiver follows Trump’s earlier deal with Putin to release diesel in exchange for easing existing sanctions.
<small>Source: Vanguard News — read the original story there.</small>
