IP- US Congress has embarked on combating terrorism in a whole new way through new legislation. The House of Representatives has passed a bill aimed at preventing domestic terrorism. This raises the odds that Congressional anti-terrorist commitments will also affect Russia, Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes.

Iran PressEurope: There are now draft resolutions in both houses of Congress calling for declaring Russia a sponsor of terrorism.

Draft resolutions on recognizing Russia as a country sponsoring terrorism were submitted to the House of Representatives and the Senate last week. Both proposals are bipartisan, which bolsters the chances that they will be passed. These are virtually the same resolutions, the newspaper writes.

They introduce many difficult-to-repeal and more than severe sanctions against Russia. For example, representatives of a country recognized as a sponsor of terrorism may be stripped of their diplomatic status, US citizens are prohibited from conducting financial transactions with its state institutions without a special license, and it will not be possible to provide economic assistance to it. This could also entail the seizure of Russian property abroad.

Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for US and Canadian Studies at the Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Vasiliev called the resolutions ‘last report sanctions’, in the sense that their adoption increases the likelihood of a direct military conflict between the United States and Russia. And for this reason, the expert does not expect that these documents will be adopted, at least not quickly. "Maybe the United States will use them as a threat, a reminder that not all sanctions weapons have yet been used," he told Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

In his opinion, everything will depend on how the situation around the Russian special operation develops. "If it is a stalemate, like now, adopting these resolutions does not make sense. The same applies to the situation if Ukraine wins. But if Russia wins, then, in order to taint the effect of this victory, these resolutions can be adopted," he believes.

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