U.S. imposes sanctions on Russia
President Joe Biden on Thursday imposed extensive new sanctions on Russia and formally blamed the country’s premier intelligence agency for the sophisticated hacking operation that breached U.S. government agencies and the nation’s largest companies.
The sanctions included measures intended to make it more difficult for Russia to take part in the global economy if it continued its campaign of disruptive actions, including in cyberspace and on the border of Ukraine.
While the sanctions might not hit hard immediately, White House officials said they left room to squeeze Moscow’s ability to borrow money on global markets if tensions escalate.
“I chose to be proportionate,” Biden said in comments at the White House, describing how he had warned President Vladimir Putin of Russia of what was coming in a phone conversation Tuesday. “The United States is not looking to kick off a cycle of escalation and conflict with Russia. We want a stable, predictable relationship,” he said, offering again to meet Putin in person this summer in Europe.
So far the Russians have not responded to that offer.
The measures Biden announced included sanctions on 32 entities and individuals for disinformation efforts and for carrying out Moscow’s interference in the 2020 presidential election. Ten Russian diplomats, most of them identified as intelligence operatives, were expelled from the Russian Embassy in Washington. And the administration banned U.S. banks from purchasing newly issued Russian government debt.
The United States also joined with European partners to impose sanctions on eight people and entities associated with Russia’s occupation of Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The sanctions came amid a large Russian military buildup on the border of Ukraine and in Crimea.
Past rounds of sanctions under previous administrations — prompted by Russia’s annexation of Crimea, its effort to influence the 2016 election and its poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain in 2018 — all failed to make Moscow think twice about increasingly aggressive actions.
On Thursday, Russia promised retaliation. In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, said a response would be “inevitable,” but she did not immediately disclose what it would entail.
“In Washington, they should know there will be a cost for the degradation of bilateral relations. Responsibility for what is happening lies wholly with the United States,” she said.
At a moment that the United States finds itself in simultaneous confrontations with Moscow and Beijing that have echoes of the bitter days of the Cold War, the action was Biden’s first effort to lay down a red line of what he called “totally inappropriate” behavior. It came after four years in which former President Donald Trump repeatedly cast doubt on intelligence findings that Russia was culpable for cyberattacks, poisonings and disinformation campaigns.
It was also the first time the United States government placed the blame for the “SolarWinds” hacking attack, which penetrated U.S. government agencies and corporations, right at the feet of Putin, saying the operation was masterminded by the SVR, one of the Russian foreign intelligence agencies directly under his control. The same agency conducted the first of two major hackings into the Democratic National Committee six years ago.
The Biden administration also revealed Thursday that a business associate of Trump campaign officials in 2016 provided campaign polling data to Russian intelligence services, the strongest evidence to date that Russian spies had penetrated the inner workings of the Trump campaign.
The most significant economic sanction the Biden administration imposed was to stop U.S. financial firms from dealing in newly issued Russian debt, a restriction that goes into effect June 14 to allow institutions to understand and prepare for the ban, and it is more of a warning shot than a sharp penalty. It is an effort to exploit Russia’s weak economy to put pressure on Moscow.
The order also designates six Russian companies for providing support to the cyberactivities of the Russian intelligence service. Among the most interesting targets was a company called Positive Technologies, a Moscowbased firm that U.S. intelligence officials say provides hacking technologies to Russian intelligence services, part of a shadowy world of contractors who provide Russia with some level of deniability about operations.
It also penalizes Russian outlets that the U.S. government has said spread disinformation. All of the groups are, at least in part, controlled by Russian intelligence, U.S. officials said.