The Graham Act sanctions Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants enforced now sit in a Treasury telephone queue, and Russia has been asked to stay on the line.
Trump has paused the Graham Act sanctions on Russia, and the US Treasury has taken him at his word with a telephone hold system. Russia is fourteenth in the queue and happy to wait. Zelenskyy is not.
"...and then the music starts again, and frankly nobody at this desk knows who chose it," the official said, down a line that crackled like the one I used from Sarajevo. He runs what the US Treasury now calls the Sanctions Hold Desk. It went live on Wednesday.
Here is what actually happened, for the archive. Donald Trump signed an order waiving the sanctions on Russia set out in the Graham Act. He told Congress the pause was in the national interest. He gave no further details.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the move unfortunate. He said it would encourage Russia to carry on with its assault. NPR has the sober version. This is the other version.
The Treasury took the phrase "on hold" and did what any large institution does with a metaphor. It built a telephone system for it. The sanctions now sit in a queue. A recorded voice tells callers their sanctions are important to us.
Russia, I am told, is currently fourteenth in line.
Sanctions II: The Waiver
I have reviewed a great many sequels in this job. This one has the usual shape. A big promise in the first instalment, a long delay, then a second film where the villain is quietly written out and nobody explains why.
The hold desk occupies a back office on the fourth floor. Carlton Prewitt, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Pending Measures, showed me round by speakerphone. "Average wait time is fourteen months," he said. "That is well within our target. Our target is also fourteen months."
Prewitt walked me through the process. Congress drafts a sanction and passes it. The president signs it into law. The Treasury then rings it up and places it on hold.
When a sanction reaches the front of the queue, a staffer picks up and asks whether it still wishes to proceed. "Most of them have hung up by then," Prewitt said. "Which saves everyone a lot of paperwork."
The music is a single piece, played on a loop. Prewitt declined to name it. He said it had been chosen because it "does not suggest urgency." I asked whether it suggested anything at all. He said it suggested someone would be with you shortly.
"Nothing in the national interest has ever needed explaining. That is how you know it is in the national interest."
He was quoting the president's letter to Congress, loosely. The letter itself ran to a paragraph. The hold music runs to about four minutes before it restarts.
The queue, as seen from the Hill
On Capitol Hill the mood was bipartisan, which in Washington means everyone is angry in the same direction for about a week. Al Jazeera has the backlash. I have the switchboard.
Marjorie Okonkwo-Lindqvist, a senior aide on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said members of both parties had tried calling the desk directly. "Fourteen of us rang at once," she told me. "It told each of us we were fourteenth. I do not think the number moves."
Her senator had wanted to ask what the national interest was. He got as far as the second verse. "He said it sounded like a lift in a mid-range hotel," she said. "He has been in that lift before. He said it was in Geneva."
I have been in that lift too. I shall not say which year.
Moscow is comfortable holding
A Russian trade attaché, who gave his name only as Mr Volkov and his mood only as "patient", said Moscow had been asked to stay on the line and was glad to. "We are very good at holding," he said. "We held for most of 2014. We got a great deal done while we waited."
He asked whether the queue could be joined from more than one phone. I said I did not know. He said that was fine, as they had already tried it, and all fourteen were fourteenth.
In Kyiv the response was shorter. Zelenskyy's office did not comment on the music. It did not have to. Budapest, 1994. A document with assurances on it, and a lot of people who meant well at the time.
Staying on the line
Before filing, I rang the desk myself. The voice thanked me for calling. It told me my sanctions were important. Then the music began, and I recognised it at once.
I had heard it in a hotel lobby in Munich, a long time ago, while waiting for a briefing that never came. I did not stay to find out what it was called then either.
Footnotes.
