In an interview with The Telegraph, the foreign minister presented a plan for the so-called “off-ramp” that could be offered to the Russian president to stop his attack on Ukraine. Ms Trous – who has revealed that she has set up a “negotiating unit” at the Foreign Office to assist in future peace talks – said sanctions on Russian banks, companies and oligarchs could be lifted in the event of a “complete ceasefire and withdrawal “. Putin must also agree to refrain from a future military strike, with the threat of a “return of sanctions” that could be imposed on Russia immediately. Mrs Tras’s intervention is the first official confirmation that Britain could lift its sweeping sanctions as part of a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. It marks a shift from previous statements in which the foreign minister said he could not see a situation in which Roman Abramovich, the most prominent of the sanctioned oligarchs, would be allowed to return to the United Kingdom. Her latest comments echo the remarks of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said US sanctions against Russia “were not designed to be permanent” and could “disappear” if Moscow changed its behavior. . The interview comes after the Kremlin gave the first indication that it planned to limit its invasion – as an army chief said Moscow’s “main goal” was now to “liberate” the Donbass region, on the eastern border with Russia. On Saturday, the Ministry of Defense said that Russian forces were increasingly dependent on indiscriminate air and artillery bombardment, as “they were proving reluctant to engage in large-scale civilian infantry operations.”
