Trump may better ties but unlikely to lift curbs on Russia, says CEO of VTB

VTB CEO Andrei Kostin predicts U.S.-Russia tensions to continue, doubts quick lifting of sanctions under Trump administration.

The next U.S. administration may make an effort to ease tensions with Moscow but Western sanctions are unlikely to be lifted any time soon, Andrei Kostin, the CEO of Russia’s second-largest bank, VTB, has said.

Mr. Kostin, one of Russia’s most influential bankers and a former diplomat who served in Australia and Britain, said he believed U.S. President-elect Donald Trump would make a genuine effort to end the conflict in Ukraine, which will be close to entering its fourth year when he takes office for a second time in January.

“Considering the statements Trump made during his election campaign, I believe that he will certainly try to make efforts to resolve the Ukrainian war. But will an agreement be reached?,” Mr. Kostin said from his office in one of the Moscow City business quarter’s towers, stressing that any peace settlement should be for the long-term.

Mr. Trump has pledged to end the conflict in Ukraine quickly, in part because he does not want the United States to pay to defend the country.

However, Mr. Kostin, who was placed under U.S. sanctions himself during Mr. Trump’s first term as President, said he did not believe sanctions against Moscow would be lifted quickly as there was a powerful anti-Russian “vector” in the U.S. establishment.

“A good example is the Jackson-Vanik amendment. It was enacted against the USSR, and it was only repealed in 2012,” Mr. Kostin said, referring to a Cold-War era law linking trade relations with the Soviet Union to the rights of religious minorities to emigrate.

A powerful insider who regularly meets with President Vladimir Putin, Mr. Kostin said that his own views on the conflict in Ukraine have changed since February 2022 and he now believed that Moscow “did not have much of a choice”.