(EDM) It has gradually dawned on the Russian leadership that the legislation approved by the US Congress amounts not just to some more tightening of sanctions, but to the downgrading of Russia’s status on the international arena to that of a “pariah state” on par with Iran and North Korea. Until recently, Russian diplomacy had been making a big fuss around the denied access to two vast estates in New York and Maryland, and President Vladimir Putin made a point of raising it at the meetings with US President Donald Trump during the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. The closure of a small US diplomatic dacha in Moscow announced last Friday was a rather weak counter to that measure enforced by the Obama administration last December, and it was certainly nowhere close to being an answer to the new devastating punishment (Svoboda.org, July 28). Putin is visibly angry about this “cynical” exploitation by the United States of its “geopolitical advantages” and perhaps also about his own miscalculations of Trump’s intentions in advancing cooperation with Russia, so a much more forceful response is to be expected—besides the dramatic reduction of the US embassy staff in Moscow (Moscow Echo, July 28). […]
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