The bill requires national intelligence assessments of intentions of the Putin government.
The US House of Representatives passed a bill sponsored by Indian American Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-IL, to reduce the Russian interferences in elections worldwide.
The bill, cosponsored by Krishnamoorthi’s House Intelligence Committee colleague Rep. Chris Stewart, R-UT, was passed by voice vote.
Titled “Keeping Russian Entrapments Minimal and Limiting Intelligence Networks (KREMLIN) Act,” the bill requires the Director of National Intelligence to produce three intelligence assessments on the political intentions of Vladimir Putin’s regime in the wake of its attempts to sabotage elections across the world.
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These assessments would address the intentions of Russian Federation political leadership toward potential military action against NATO members, potential responses to an enlarged United States or NATO presence in eastern Europe, and potential areas where the Russian government could exploit weaknesses and divisions amongst the governments of Western adversaries.
“In 2016, the health of American democracy was threatened by Russian attempts to interference in our elections,” Krishnamoorthi said in a press release. “Unfortunately, this danger remains as the Russian Federation continues to deploy many of the same tactics against our NATO allies across Europe, threatening our collective and national security.”
The congressman described the House passage of the bill as “another step towards holding the Kremlin accountable by making sure that the United States, and our NATO allies are better prepared to thwart future attacks that aim to weaken our democratic institutions.”
Stewart said, “Russia is continuing its campaign to undermine democracies and our allies in NATO. This bill is a commonsense measure that will help our country understand the breadth of actions undertaken by Russian agents to drive our alliances apart.”
“Russia continues to engage in information warfare and political interference in the West, including by undermining democratic systems and exploiting economic and ethnic tensions within member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” the bill says. “Such activities constitute a threat to the United States and to its allies.”
The bill called for sanctions against Russia in response to its “meddling in the 2016 United States presidential election,” its “continued aggression in the Ukraine and the Crimea region,” and its “support for the Assad regime in Syria.” It said that “the United States should sustain its newly deployed enhanced forward presence in Poland, Lithuania, and Estonia and urge Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany to quickly deploy and sustain parallel commitments in those countries.”