OBAMA AND BUSH AIDES PRAISE NEW RUSSIA SANCTIONS
Seventeen oligarchs, tycoons and officials in Putin’s inner circle are targeted by Trump administration
Former US officials have welcomed new sanctions against Russia imposed by the Trump government, which target the inner circle of President Vladimir Putin and prompted Moscow to threaten a “tough response”.
The sanctions punish 17 senior Russian government officials, oligarchs, financial and oil tycoons, and a state-owned weapons company accused of arming Syrian President Bashar Al Assad.
Rosoboron exsport was named on the list for having “longstanding and ongoing ties to the government of Syria, with billions of dollars’ worth of weapons sales over more than a decade”.
Among the people listed are Mr Putin’s son-in-law and energy executive Kirill Shamalov, and Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who is linked to the former chairman of the Trump campaign, Paul Manafort.
Special counsel Robert Mueller indicted Mr Manafort last February and is questioning Russian oligarchs in the investigation into Moscow’s role in the 2016 US presidential election.
The list also includes businessmen Suleiman Kerimov, said to be involved in money laundering. and Igor Rotenberg, the owner of Gazprom.
“We will not let the current attack, or any new anti-Russian attack, go without a tough response,” Russia’s foreign ministry later said. “No amount of pressure will make Russia deviate from the path it has chosen.”
Daniel Fried, former co-ordinator for sanctions policy at the state department in the government of former president Barack Obama, called the new sanctions “solid and strong”.
Mr Fried, who also oversaw US sanctions on Russia, wrote at the Atlantic Council on Friday that the new sanctions leave “plenty of room for escalation” while also avoiding “dumb moves, like trying to sanction Russian gas exports”, something the Europeans have warned against.
“Russian aggression will carry costs for them,” he said.
Marc Johnson, a security consultant and former CIA operations officer, told The
National that the sanctions, unlike previous ones that were centered around a specific Russian government action, “appear to be calibrated to send a message to Mr Putin directly”.
Mr Johnson said that, in addition to the obvious oligarchs, “there are several people known to be close to Mr Putin”.
“It remains hard to assess the impact but if we can judge by the histrionic performance of Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, yesterday over the Skripal sanctions, recent administration actions may be starting to bite,” he said.
John McLaughlin, former acting CIA director in the George W Bush government, also welcomed the move.
Mr McLaughlin told NBC last week that sanctions aimed at Mr Putin’s inner circle and oligarchs who invest money in real estate in the West are more effective than the expulsion of diplomats carried out by the US government last month.
Yet the delay in rolling out the sanctions could constrain their effect. A US official said on Friday that the sanctions were no surprise.
“They had to know these were coming,” he said.
But that anticipation could have given those targeted time to move their assets to avoid enforcement.
The overarching reach of the sanctions and not attributing them to any one action of the Russian government suggest a growing wedge between Moscow and Washington.
A US official said the actions were “in response to the totality of the Russian government’s ongoing and increasingly brazen pattern of malign activity around the world”.
“The sanctions target Russia’s behaviour in Syria, Crimea, Ukraine, Europe, meddling in US elections, cyber attacks and North Korea,” the official said.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said: “Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government’s destabilising activities.”