America turns the screws
WASHINGTON The Trump administration has imposed new economic sanctions on Russian politicians, tycoons and businesses, in its most aggressive response to Moscow’s attempts to undermine Western democracies and recurring cyber offensives.
The measures announced yesterday take aim not only at Russians directly connected to the Kremlin but also several with links to US President Donald Trump’s election campaign or his associates who have been scrutinised in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
The sanctions continue the Trump administration’s trend of taking increasingly bold moves against Russia under pressure from Congress, even as Trump holds out the possibility of warmer relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
‘‘The Russian government operates for the disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and government elites,’’ Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. ‘‘Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government’s destabilising activities.’’
Russia’s Foreign Ministry vowed a ‘‘harsh response’’ and said the measures would be just as ineffective as previous rounds of sanctions.
The list includes 17 Russian government officials, a stateowned weapons trading company and seven so-called oligarchs. Several of the individuals have close ties to Putin, including the son of a childhood friend of the Russian president, and an energy executive who vacationed in a dacha near the Putin family and married his daughter.
Some of the oligarchs, such as natural resources magnates Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg, made their fortunes in the 1990s and have looser connections to Putin. Others got rich running some of Russia’s biggest statecontrolled energy and financial firms, including energy giant Gazprom and state-controlled bank VTB.
But what sets Deripaska and Vekselberg apart from the many other Russian tycoons who did not make the list is their connections to the Trump world.
Deripaska, for example, was once a business partner of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is facing moneylaundering charges. A top executive at a US company affiliated with Vekselberg donated to the Trump inauguration fund, and Vekselberg attended Trump’s inauguration.
Other people whose names have surfaced in connection with the Russia investigation have also ended up on the Treasury’s list.
Konstantin Kosachev, a Russian lawmaker who led softpower initiatives for the government and surfaced in a nowfamous dossier alleging that the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin during the 2016 election, is among those sanctioned. So is Alexander Torshin, a little-known deputy central bank governor who rose to public interest in the US only after his efforts to promote gun rights there landed him at a table with Donald Trump Jr during a 2016 National Rifle Association conference.
The list of targets also includes Igor Rotenberg, the son of a Russian tycoon who grew up taking martial arts classes with Putin, and Kirill Shamalov, who also grew up in a family close to the Putins and who the Treasury said married Putin’s daughter in 2013.
The action also sanctions top national security officials, including Nikolai Patrushev, a former KGB officer and longtime secretary of the Security Council of Russia, who is one of Putin’s top national security advisers, and Vladimir Kolokoltsev, Russia’s interior minister.
The sanctions freeze any assets the individuals or entities named hold in the US, and prohibit American citizens from conducting business with them – even if they work for international companies outside the US.
The Treasury Department said it would issue guidance to Americans on how to unwind from any business interests they had with the people and companies on the list, in a way that would let them avoid being punished for violating the sanctions.
The real power of sanctions is that they discourage international financial institutions, which typically conduct business at least partially in US dollars, from doing business with them. The administration explicitly warned that non-Americans could face sanctions themselves for facilitating significant transactions with the people and companies named.
Senior administration officials stressed that the sanctions were not aimed at the Russian people. Instead, they were meant to cripple the finances of those elites who had ‘‘disproportionately benefited from the bad decisions made by the Kremlin on their behalf’’, one of the officials said.
The officials declined to elaborate on why Putin was not directly targeted, but said several people in the Russian leader’s inner circle were being sanctioned.
‘‘I think it’s important to see in today’s action a message. And that message is that actions have consequences,’’ said another senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. ‘‘Today’s announcements are the result of a decision that the Russian government has made and continues to make in choosing a path of confrontation.’’
Russia accused Washington of futile scaremongering, which has including denying visas and seizing property and financial assets.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said the US had forgotten that the seizure of property and foreign money amounted to ‘‘plunder’’.
In recent weeks, Trump’s top advisers have pushed for tougher actions against the Kremlin after the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain, interference in the 2016 US presidential election, and a cyberattack against Ukraine and other countries last year that was described as the most costly in history.
The sanctions won quick support from Congress, which has pushed for tough moves against Putin’s inner circle since last year, when it passed legislation requiring the Treasury Department to publish a list of Russian oligarchs. Trump signed the legislation after it passed with a vetoproof majority, even as he called it a seriously flawed and unconstitutional bill.
Last week the US expelled 60 Russian spies and diplomats in response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian spy, and his daughter in the English city of Salisbury. It was the largest expulsion of Russians in US history. Russia, in turn, expelled 60 US officials. Washington Post-Bloomberg