1. Short title This Act may be cited as the Countering Russian Influence Through Interagency Coordination And Leadership Act or the CRITICAL Act . 2. Findings (a) Findings Congress finds the following: (1) Foreign adversaries of the United States are currently using malign influence to disrupt, alter, and undermine United States foreign and domestic policy and democratic processes at low cost and low risk to themselves. (2) In exporting malign influence, foreign adversaries use ambiguity to their advantage, employing proxies, hackers, private sector companies, independent research agencies, and other actors with varying degrees of separation from their governments in an effort to obscure foreign government involvement and maintain deniability. (3) Since the Cold War, the Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation (in this Act referred to as Russia ) has attempted to use these types of tools of statecraft to influence the foreign and domestic policies and actions of the United States government, as well as the beliefs and political decisions of America and its citizens. (4) The United States intelligence community has credibly concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election for President of the United States, and European allies and partners have credibly concluded that Russia attempted to influence several key European votes in 2016 and 2017, including the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom and elections in the Netherlands, France, and Germany. (5) Russia has attempted to deter or derail aspiring NATO members from achieving accession, as evidenced by their aggression against Ukraine and Georgia and the attempted violent coup in Montenegro in 2016 with the assistance of local Serbian nationalists. (6) Russia has leveraged its gas monopoly over Europe to influence politics and political decisions of our NATO allies and European Union partners, as it has done repeatedly in Ukraine and across Eastern Europe. (7) Russia has attempted to finance fringe political movements in countries throughout Europe,