Kremlin: Obama’s Sanctions are “Illegal, Baseless and Aggressive”

(The Real Agenda News) Russia plans to retaliate against the United States after Obama issues new sanctions against diplomats and Russian interests in the US.

Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, said the new sanctions imposed by the outgoing US government were “aggressive,” “baseless” and “illegal from the standpoint of international law” and said they would receive a “proper response” “.

Peskov said he still does not know exactly what the reaction will be, but he will “take into account” the fact that the “Obama administration has only three weeks left.”

Moscow, the spokesman added, does not agree with the US allegations. According to the Kremlin, the sanctions pursue two objectives: “further aggravate the already bad” bilateral relations and “to strike down the new administration” of the United States.

These are actions that “substantially undermine the foreign policy positions of the next Administration,” of Donald Trump.

“They have hardly had a parallel in the history of the United States, because after all, they respond to an internal matter,” added Peskov.

The new sanctions have come as no surprise to Russia, which was already waiting for them. On Tuesday, during a telephone conversation with his American counterpart, John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized the Obama administration for insisting “to the end in trying to further undermine normal relations between Russia and the USA “.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zajárova, who had warned on Wednesday that Moscow would take action in response, also anticipated the sanctions.

News of the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats from Washington and San Francisco arrived in Moscow around 11 pm local time, so that the scope of the Russian response would not be known until today.

The Kremlin has denied its involvement in cyber attacks against the Democratic Party and has said that with its accusations the US administration is only trying to justify its defeat in the presidential elections.

Zajárova affirmed that Russia is already tired of the lies about Russian hackers who launch attacks on America’s “high places”.

This “misinformation”, according to the foreign spokeswoman, was used by Washington to help her candidate in the presidential election.

She warned that “any action against Russian diplomatic representations in the US will immediately have an effect on US diplomats in Russia.”

Konstantin Kosachov, the head of the Federation Council’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said that the Obama Administration “is possessed manically because of its desire to take revenge” on Russia for the involvement of the Kremlin in Syria and against Trump for his victory in the presidential elections.