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Senate gets in way of US-Russia rapprochement: Analyst

Wednesday, 28 December 2016 7:10 PM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 28 December 2016 7:10 PM ]

This file photo taken on January 12, 2016 shows US President Barack Obama delivering the State of the Union Address at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. (AFP photo)

US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has said almost the entire Senate is of the opinion that Russia interfered in the November presidential election. The US senator also claimed that the alleged meddling in the 2016 vote was not the only case worth prosecution, arguing Moscow’s practice is common across the world. Graham told CNN on Tuesday that the Senate is going to put sanctions together that hit Russian President Vladimir Putin as an individual and his inner circle.

Mark Sleboda, international relations and security analyst from Moscow, told Press TV’s Top 5 that US senators are seeking to prevent President-elect Trump from amending stained ties with Russia.

Lindsey Graham and John McCain, Republican Senators from Arizona, “have made it their declared mission to destroy any attempt by the President-elect Trump administration to seek detente with Russia,” Sleboda said on Wednesday.

“They (US senators) are deliberately seeking to prevent Donald Trump from improving foreign policy relations with Russia,” he noted.

Mocking US senators’ attempt to put more pressure on Russia, he said, “It’s kind of doing something by American politicians,” because the US-imposed sanctions will not have any real effect on Russia.

“If there are any sanctions forthcoming, it would be a party and shot by this US Congress and by the Obama administration,” he added.

“Certainly, all of the sanctions that the US has applied to Russia have had no effect on changing its foreign policy over the last few years that galvanized patriotism around Russia,” the analyst stated.

Pointing to the accusations leveled against Russia over Moscow’s interference in the US elections, he said, “We don’t have any definitive proof that Russia has interfered in these elections or if it did that it had any effect.”

Sleboda went on to say that “all the evidence is coincidental and it could very easily - as the neo-con John Bolton from the United States has said - be a false flag incident designed to implicate Russia or simply partisan attacks from Democrats who are very sore and having lost the election are seeking to blame shift away their problems.”

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