On Tuesday, the US Department of the Treasury published a list of 114 Russian politicians, including the entire Russian presidential administration and members of the government, and 96 business people who all might face US official sanctions.
"If sanctions are not at issue here, then the motive behind the US government decision to compile and then publish this list seems to be political," Schirach, president of the Global Policy Institute, said on Wednesday. "Some say it is an overt American attempt to influence the outcome of the upcoming political elections in Russia."
The Kremlin Report, Schirach said, represents yet another chapter in a very complicated US-Russia relations story.
Efforts to repair the current poor and complicated state of US-Russian relations could not be realistically attempted until the current wave of US probes of alleged Russian connections with President Donald Trump are completed, Schirach cautioned.
Russian President Vladimir Putin characterized the report as an "unfriendly move" by the United States that harmed relations between Moscow and Washington. Putin added that Moscow was not interested in scaling back relations with Washington and would refrain from retaliatory steps.