Republican from the US House of Representatives Jim Banks presented a new draft of sanctions against Russia. In addition to President Vladimir Putin and high-ranking Russian officials, the sanctions list includes a number of security officials, journalists, big businessmen, as well as the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
The draft sanctions, dubbed in the media as the “Act to Hold Putin Accountable,” were submitted for consideration on January 19, but so far its text has not been officially published.
In Russia, the initiative of Congressman Banks has already been followed by a reaction. Supporters of a mirror response appeared in Parliament in case the bill is passed by the US Congress. Member of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs Dmitry Belik believes that the best response would be to break diplomatic relations with countries that have joined the anti-Russian sanctions.
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Vyacheslav Nikonov, deputy head of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, questioned the effectiveness of the sanctions. He called them destructive and said that the new package of restrictions would once again raise an iron curtain between the countries.
It will divide our nations. Do Americans really want to then knock their foreheads on a closed door?
Security guarantees and Donbass as a stumbling block
In addition to economic sanctions in the bill, Banks proposed officially recognizing Russia as a “sponsor of terrorism” and declaring that it supports “terrorist forces” in the Donbass. The Republican opposes any negotiations involving Russia on security guarantees in Europe until Moscow restores the territorial integrity of Ukraine and returns Crimea to it.
The head of Crimea, Sergey Aksyonov, believes that the congressmen simply “collected together” all possible options for sanctions, including the demand for the return of Crimea.
The new project once again demonstrates how totalitarian the thinking of American politicians is and how much it is poisoned by the consciousness of its own exclusivity. A very dangerous brain fog
Sanctions against journalists
In addition to high-ranking officials and security officials, Banks proposed imposing sanctions on the editor-in-chief of the RT television channel Margarita Simonyan, TV presenter Vladimir Solovyov and the general director of Channel One Konstantin Ernst.
Notably, RT DE, the German division of RT, is already effectively under EU sanctions. At the end of December 2021, the channel was taken off the air in Europe at the request of the German regulator MABB. The representative of the Union of German Journalists Hendrik Zerner supported the actions of the German authorities and called the activities of RT “propaganda, not journalism.”
At a joint press conference between Russian and German Foreign Ministers Sergey Lavrov and Annalena Burbock, Timur Shafir, representative of the Union of Journalists of Russia, spoke about the danger of politicizing the situation with the ban on RT DE activities in Germany and conveyed to Burbock an appeal from the UJR about the inadmissibility of harassment.
An earlier version of the 35-name sanctions list was approved by the U.S. House Rules Committee on September 23, 2021. It included Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov, Director of the National Guard Viktor Zolotov, Chairman of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko, and Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin.
It was reported that restrictions could also be imposed on businessman Roman Abramovich, the head of Gazprom Alexei Miller and a number of other persons.
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