Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Russia won’t expel US envoys
Putin rules out tit-for-tat action after Obama kicks out 35 diplomats over hacking
RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin decided against retaliation for outgoing President Barack Obama’s expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats from the US over cyber attacks allegedly backed by the Kremlin and aimed at interfering with this year’s election campaign.
“We won’t send anyone away,” Putin said after Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov asked him to approve a mirror expulsion of US diplomats in a televised meeting yesterday.
The Russian government accused the outgoing US administration of spending its last weeks in power trying to sabotage president-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to seek better relations with the Kremlin. Trump has said he wants to co-operate with Putin in fighting terrorism and might review sanctions Obama imposed over Russia’s involvement in a con- flict in Ukraine.
Lavrov proposed the expulsion of 31 US diplomats in Moscow and four in St Petersburg, to match the 31 Russian embassy officials in Washing- ton and four consular staff in San Francisco ordered to leave the country a day earlier.
Obama described the 35 Russians ejected from the US as intelligence operatives working under diplomatic cover. The US also imposed sanctions on top intelligence officials and said it shut down Russian compounds – one in Maryland and another in New York – used for “intelligence-related purposes”. Russia has denied it was behind the hacking.
As part of the US administration’s response, the FBI and Homeland Security Department released a report with technical evidence intended to prove Russia’s military and civilian intelligence services were behind the hacking and to expose some of their most sensitive hacking infrastructure.
It dubs the Russian oper- ation “Grizzly Steppe”.
“All Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions. These data-theft and disclosure activities could only have been directed by the highest levels of the Russian government,” Obama said on Thursday.
Obama’s actions put Trump in a bind less than a month before his inauguration. Reversing course would effectively reject the findings of US intelligence agencies and put him at odds with Republican leaders in Congress, who called the sanctions a necessary step.
Trump signalled a possible shift from his previous dismissals of Russian involvement in the hack, saying in a brief statement while “it’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things”, he would meet intelligence officials next week.
Trump has repeatedly scoffed at US intelligence agencies’ conclusions that Russia was behind the pilfering and steady release of e-mails from Democratic national committee and party officials to harm Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
Russia was hopeful it could ride out the storm and put ties with the US on a better track once Trump takes office, said Fyodor Lukyanov, chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, a Kremlin foreign-policy advisory group.
“Russia views these not as US sanctions, but Obama sanctions, so he will go and we can both decide we don’t bear any responsibility for the actions of a jackass,” Lukyanov said.
A White House official, briefing reporters on condition of anonymity, said Obama’s successor could reverse the executive actions but suggested Trump might not want to be in the position of letting Russian spies return and giving Moscow a green light to meddle in European and US politics. The US had indications Russia would try to interfere with elections on all levels, the official said.
Among those targeted in the sanctions announced by the Treasury Department were the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, and the Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor agency to the KGB. Experts in the US have linked the GRU to the hacking of the Democratic national committee and party officials.
In addition, two Russians accused of commercial theft and fraud using computer networks were hit with sanctions. – Washington Post