Kerry promised to lift sanctions on Russia without disputing the ownership of Crimea

During talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin, US Secretary of State John Kerry stated that relations between Russia and the United States "need to be revived," and for the first time spoke of lifting sanctions in the near future if the Minsk agreements are implemented. Moreover, the US promises to lift both its own sanctions and those of the EU. A Kommersant correspondent concludes that Crimea's sovereignty will not be a factor in the sanctions' lifting.

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“Russian negotiators claim that the tone of their colleagues, and above all Mr. Kerry himself, has radically changed,” writes Kommersant special correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov in his report from Sochi. – He said that something needs to be done with the relations between Russia and the United States, they “need to be pulled out” and because of this we will have to look for new formats. Moreover, the US Secretary of State spoke about lifting sanctions and suggested thinking about which sanctions could be lifted in the near future.”

To this, according to an interlocutor from the Russian Foreign Ministry, Kerry received an answer: Russia will not participate in the search for an answer to the question of what sanctions can be lifted and under what pretext - because it did not impose them.

At the same time, answering a question from the famous American reporter Matt Lee, Kerry suddenly uttered a key phrase that had not been heard from him before and, it seems, no one expected to hear in the near future: “If and when the Minsk agreements are implemented, then the lifting of US sanctions will begin and the EU." “It turns out that the United States has a decisive influence on the EU on the issue of sanctions. Mr. Kerry, at least before, still distanced himself from such confessions,” notes Kolesnikov.

In addition, the author of the report writes, if you believe the words of the Secretary of State, the problem of Crimea, about which nothing is said in the Minsk agreements, will not matter in the lifting of sanctions.