The house of representatives overwhelmingly passed Tuesday a bill toughening sanctions against Russia, introduced in connection with the alleged intervention of the Russian Federation in the presidential elections in 2016, the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine and Syria. The vote passed with a score of 419 votes in favor and 3 against.
The bill was the result of a bipartisan agreement reached over the weekend in talks between House of representatives and the Senate.
Now the bill will be forwarded for consideration to the Senate and then signed by the President. It is likely that approval will take place before the Congress will be announced a break in August. Even if the President vetoes the bill, the vote in the House of representatives indicate that it will be easy enough to overcome.
The bill provides a clause according to which the President has no right in the future solely to mitigate or cancel the sanctions only after coordination with Congress.
The sanctions provided by the bill is primarily aimed at Russian oil and gas projects with companies located in USA, Germany and other countries. It is planned to limit the terms of financing Russian oil and gas companies up to 30 days.
Among other sanctions – U.S. companies and individuals will not be allowed to lend to Russian banks for longer than 2 weeks (this hour, this period is 90 days).
It should be noted that new sanctions, if adopted, will be the most ambitious in 2014.
Moscow and also European countries reacted very negatively to the new initiative in respect to sanctions. They claim that relations between the US and Russia deteriorate significantly with the adoption of the relevant law.
