MOSCOW. June 8 (Interfax) - Alexei Pushkov, the head of the Russian State Duma international affairs committee, believes that, if the U.S. Congress passes the so-called Magnitsky Bill, Russia will take identical steps.
"If American congressmen pass this bill and deny entry to the States to 60 Russian officials and freeze their accounts in America, our country will take symmetrical steps in response," Pushkov told Interfax on Friday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said this openly in a May 16 message to U.S. President Barack Obama, he said.
Pushkov acknowledged that it is quite likely that both the House of Representatives and the Senate will pass this bill.
"I think our symmetrical measures will imply the adoption of a list of 60 American officials who violated the rights of Russian citizens and to whom we will also deny entry visas," Pushkov said.
State Duma deputies have quite a lot of unanswered questions in light of two recent high-profile trials of Russian citizens in the United States, he said.
"Who abducted our pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko? Who was involved in arresting our businessman Viktor Bout and transporting him from Thailand to the U.S.? We also have a lot of questions for the prosecutor in the latter case," Pushkov said.
Half a year ago, the U.S. Department of State "preemptively endorsed a list of 11 Russian officials allegedly responsible for Sergei Magnitsky's death, denying them U.S. visas," he said.
"In response to this, we also designated 11 Americans guilty of resounding crimes against human rights and torture in prisons in Guantanamo in Cuba, Abu Ghraib in Iraq, and Bagram in Afghanistan," Pushkov said.
"Another thing I would like to focus on is that this hostile act unprovoked by Russia, which American congressmen are planning to approve against a sovereign state, could seriously affect some aspects of international cooperation between the two countries," he said.
The U.S. House of Representatives' Foreign Affairs Committee approved a bill imposing visa, financial, and property sanctions against Russian officials believed to be responsible for human rights abuses on Thursday.