Russia is intent "on causing grievous harm to international peace and stability,” Sen. Cory Gardner wrote recently in the New York Times, and he believes the State Department should “consider adding the country to its list of state sponsors of terrorism.”
Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution who has taught at the University of Denver, tells Colorado Matters what such a step might mean. Syria, Sudan, Iran and North Korea are already on the list.
More from Gardner, in the Times:
The moral case for such a designation is sound. Russia has invaded its neighbors Georgia and Ukraine, it supports the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad and our enemies in Afghanistan, and it is engaged in active information warfare against Western democracies, including meddling in the 2016 United States elections.
This week, the Organization for Prevention of Chemical Weapons announced that the Kremlin had crossed yet another previously unimaginable line, when it confirmed findings by the British government that a Russian military-grade nerve agent, which British authorities identified as Novichok, was used to poison a former Russian intelligence agent, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury.
