Prominent Russian TV journalist Vladimir Pozner has criticized the United States over the Magnitsky Act. “The U.S.  Senate, and earlier the House of Representatives, approved the Magnitsky Act.  It only needs to be signed by President Obama to come into force.  I find it almost ridiculous,” Pozner said. Up to now, “Americans have failed to decide whether or not to publish the names of the people enumerated in this Act,” Pozner noted.

“And it’s really amusing that the man who proposed this Act, Senator Cardin, wanted it to be a human rights act for the entire world, and not just for Russia. But then guys from the business and the non-business world came running up and said, ‘No. Our interests will be hurt and so will the interests of the United States.’  And guess what happened in the end. Right: it deals specifically with Russia,” the journalist said.

Another misunderstanding in Pozner’s view is that “99 percent of the congressmen do not care about the rights of the Russian people – it’s a purely internal document, nothing more.” “It will have absolutely no effect on Russia, except that some nice people will no longer keep their money in American banks or make payments in dollars.”

Pozner acknowledged that he was afraid that Russia’s response would be asymmetrical to a point where it would cause irreparable harm to Russian-American bilateral relations. “But my fears were in vain. The response was symmetrical, which means that we will draw up a list of as many people as there are on the American list, and those will be the people whom we hold to be responsible for human rights violations in America. They will be barred from entering Russia, their Russian bank accounts will be frozen and they won’t be able to spend their roubles. How awful would that be!” Pozner wrote.