Moscow - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev thinks that the support of the Magnitsky Act by European countries is pointless and vows that Russia will respond to such a decision by the US Congress.
“If we speak about this act, it will invoke both symmetrical and asymmetrical reactions on our behalf. We passed all of these in the Soviet times. Do we need it? I think we don’t. And they [the United States] will get nothing good from this,” Medvedev said in an interview with the Kommersant daily on Thursday.
“We welcome the fact that the U.S. Congress has finally scrapped the relic of the past, the Jackson-Vanik amendment. But of course we dislike the fact that this is linked to another act,” he said.
U.S. attempts to dictate its will to other countries are impermissible, he said. “This, in my opinion, is a huge mistake of U.S. legislators and the U.S. establishment in general,” Medvedev said.
“The doctrine of advanced, if you will, U.S. sovereignty is a poor-quality doctrine: when U.S. courts try to consider disputes between foreign people, when the U.S. justice tries to pass a verdict on the whole territory of the planet, when U.S. special services catch people and take them to the U.S. territories to put them under trial or to keep them without investigation and trial…” Medvedev said.
Medvedev explained the proliferation of the Magnitsky Act to the United Kingdom and Germany by rigid discipline in NATO.
“There is Euro-Atlantic solidarity, if you wish. I have been in practical politics for quite a long time. I saw how certain issues are being voted. I was present at a NATO-Russia Council meeting, and I know how such work is carried out: rigid subordination and discipline as it was in a Socialist camp,” Medvedev said.
“This act is an example of how ideological decisions made in place are copied in other countries. This is unwise and pointless,” he said.
