The United States Congress sees no need for imposing tougher sanctions on Russia straightaway, a well-informed source on Capitol Hill told. The insider spelled out his view of the situation in the run-up to the Trump administration’s report on implementing the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act due to be received by Congress soon.
“There is an opinion among those in Congress who are generally interested in such things that the current sanctions are tough enough as they are right now,” the source said. “And if these people are concerned about something, it is not so much the need to add something to the sanctions act, but the question of what we should do if we need to cooperate [with Russia] more closely. Or if we need more flexibility, for example, in case of implementing the Minsk accords on Ukraine.”
He is confident that the US sanctions are “much more related to Russia’s actions in Ukraine” than to the alleged meddling in the US election which Washington has pinned on Moscow.