Page 7 - RusRPTFeb22

2.0 Politics
2.1 The US tables new “sanctions from hell” bill
Concurrent with the week of European talks following Russia’s demand for limits on Nato membership, the US Senate introduced a new bill mandating “sanctions from hell” on Russia should it attack Ukraine.
The bill was submitted on January 13 just as the Russian delegation was holding talks with OSCE delegation in Vienna and is even harsher than a previous bill proposed by US Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez in November. That bill was known as the “cascade of sanctions” and appended to the state defence-spending bill that passed at the end of last year, although the sanctions amendments were withdrawn at the last minute.
“The proposed sanctions bill, which will undoubtedly get full support from both parties in the US Congress, would seek to block Russia from not only SWIFT but all other messaging services (such as Telex) and would extend debt restrictions to state-owned/controlled enterprises (see Appendix 1 for details),” Chris Weafer, CEO of Macro Advisors, said in a note emailed to clients.
Russia has taken an increasingly hard line to the West’s policy of punishing Russia by imposing sanctions. Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov set Russia’s tolerance to new sanctions to zero in February with his new rules of the game speech and threatened to break off ties with the West entirely if new sanctions that “harm Russia’s economic interests” were imposed by the west.
The imposition of any sanctions are likely to trigger equally an extreme riposte by the Kremlin, but the new mooted US sanctions only come into play if Russia attacks Ukraine militarily – something that remains highly unlikely.
“Putin warns that sanctions would be a “game-changer”. These sanctions would cross a red line for Moscow, and President Putin has already said that enacting them would change the US-Russia relationship. It would mean that Moscow would for sure move closer (politically and militarily) to Beijing and relations with NATO would be a lot more dangerous,” says Weafer.
“US business in Russia would be affected this time. Moscow has consistently said it wants to keep “bad politics” separate from “good business” and it has abided by that mantra since sanctions started in 2014. But, if the current sanctions were to be enacted, this stance would change and US business activities in Russia would be impacted,” Weafer added.
The new sanctions would encompass the following: target high-level Russian figures (including Putin); sanction 13 banks; target financial messaging services; ban US investors from buying or owning newly issued debt instruments; new sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline; and target the extractive industries.
7 RUSSIA Country Report February 2022 www.intellinews.com