Kayleigh McEnany: “President Trump sanctioned Russia. President Biden gave them a pipeline.”
PolitiFact's ruling: Mostly False
Here's why: Russia’s threat of a Ukraine invasion has brought heightened attention to a big infrastructure project: the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline.
The roughly 750-mile undersea pipeline would carry Russian natural gas to Germany, which is phasing out its use of coal and nuclear energy. The pipeline was completed in September 2021 but is not yet operational, pending German regulatory approval.
Many of Germany’s allies in the West, including the United States and the United Kingdom, expressed concerns about the pipeline’s construction when it was announced in 2015, warning that it could hand Russia geopolitical leverage over Germany and other European nations.
"President Trump sanctioned Russia. President Biden gave them a pipeline. And here we are," McEnany said in the post.
McEnany’s dichotomy is exaggerated, experts told PolitiFact. The first part of her statement has some validity but ignores that both presidents have sanctioned Russia, without stopping the project. The second part is flat wrong.
Trump’s Russia policies
McEnany has a point that Trump did continue existing sanctions against Russia, in addition to imposing some new ones.
Trump continued many of the policies toward Russia that had begun under his predecessor, President Barack Obama, particularly after Russia annexed the Crimea region of Ukraine in 2014.
For instance, Trump kept in place the Magnitsky Act, which targeted high-ranking Russians with sanctions. His administration also put new sanctions on five Russians and Chechens over human rights abuses, and it approved lethal arms sales to Ukraine, which Obama had not.
How do Biden’s Russia policies compare with Trump’s?
For the most part, Biden has continued the sanctions imposed by his predecessors and added new ones.
https://www.statesman.com/story/new...k-did-trump-biden-sanction-russia/6735826001/