Russia sees Magnitsky Act harmful

MOSCOW - Moscow sees the Magnitsky Act passed in the United Stated has seriously harmed the Russia-US relations, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Wednesday.

Ryabkov called the Magnitsky Act "essentially anti-Russian, harmful and faulty" when giving an interview to the Voice of Russia radio station.

"In spite of our repeated addresses and demands, the US administration followed those who insisted to substitute the essentially anti-Russian, highly harmful and fundamentally faulty Magnitsky Act for the anti-Soviet Jackson-Vanik amendment," he said.

"The background has been rather grave," Ryabkov said, adding all these factors in aggregate resulted in creating actually grave background in the year's end.

The Russian diplomat also slammed the US Congress for assuming a role of a judiciary body by recognizing certain group of Russians guilty.

However, Ryabkov still expected the Magnitsky Act would not further deteriorate Russia-US relations up to the point of no return.

"We hope that page could be turned and the damage inflicted to (Russia-US) relations would not become irreparable and we could move ahead," he said.

Meanwhile, the deputy minister said that from Moscow's point of view, the only normal way for maintaining international relations is a search of compromise on disputable issues, such as human rights.

The Magnitsky Act, passed by the US House of Representatives and the Senate in November, requires the US government to impose visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials who were believed responsible for the death of Sergei Magnitsky, an anti-corruption lawyer who died in a Moscow jail in 2009 during his one-year detention after accusing officials of mass tax fraud.