US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has admitted that the US is unable to add Moscow to its own list of countries sponsoring terrorism because Russia is not such a country.
Blinken said this while speaking at a hearing of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, during a broadcast of the event on C-SPAN. The US Secretary of State said noted:
“Aggression is not terrorism, they are two different things.”Â
This is how he responded to a question about why the US administration did not follow the calls of the Ukrainian leadership and a number of Western representatives and did not include Moscow in its own list of states sponsors of terrorism.
Antony Blinken added that the US believes that the term “does not fit” what Russia is doing. He noted that recognising Russia as a sponsor of terrorism “threatens to undermine some of the multilateral cooperation and coordination” that the US has had on sanctions against Russia.
Blinken also emphasised that if in the future states came to peace talks over the conflict in Ukraine, “it would be extremely difficult to reverse.” The US secretary of state also added that another problem would have emerged regarding Russia’s assets if the US recognised Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism. According to him, this could “prove to be a hindrance to the United States’ active efforts”, which are allegedly aimed at ensuring that Russia pays for the terrible damage to Kyiv, including the use of its sovereign assets.
There’s a political reason for everything
At the same time, Antony Blinken reminded that if a state is recognised as a sponsor of terrorism, its assets are capable of ending up frozen in court. He also noted:
“So there are a number of practical reasons why we don’t think this is the best course of action.”
In addition, he pointed out that the executive branch of the US leadership already “has sufficient authority to apply different sanctions” against Moscow, which the US side is actively using. The US Secretary of State concluded:
“They are more accurate in terms of describing what Russia is doing. And we don’t want to run into unintended consequences, second- and third-order effects that could actually make it more difficult to achieve what we’re trying to achieve.”Â
The US reacts subtly to the issue of terrorism. Washington has not been so smooth with Russia either. Recently, former Ukrainian MP Andrii Derkach said in an interview with the media that partners of US President Joe Biden’s family sponsored terrorism and allocated money for the work of the Ukrainian Defence Ministry’s HUR.
The former Ukrainian politician noted that special investigation could trace “virtually all movements of funds through Burisma, a company with ties to Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden. He also said that the US Congress received all the information, which would use it to “prove influence peddling.”
Derkach also said in the interview that one cannot consider the political situation in Ukraine in isolation from “external control” by the US deep state. Currently, the US allegedly used Ukraine as a tool to carry out terrorist actions, the politician added.
