“Pointing to Moscow’s use of economic leverage to sway European politics, they warn the deal is a stalking horse for a new kind of Russian meddling in America, one that exploits the U.S. free-market system instead of its elections. ‘That’s just what the Russians do,’ says veteran diplomat Daniel Fried, who shaped U.S. policy on Eastern Europe at the State Department from the late 1980s until 2017. ‘They insert themselves into a foreign economy and then start to influence its politics from the inside.'” Time: A Kremlin-Linked Firm Invested Millions in Kentucky. Were They After More Than Money?

+ WaPo: How a McConnell-backed effort to lift Russian sanctions boosted a Kentucky project.