U.S. targets Russians with ties to Trump aides
WASHINGTON >> The Trump administration imposed new economic sanctions on Russian politicians, tycoons and businesses Friday in its most aggressive response to Moscow’s attempts to undermine Western democracies and recurring cyber offensives.
The measures take aim not only at Russians directly connected to the Kremlin but also several with links to President Donald Trump’s campaign or his associates who have been scrutinized in special counsel Robert Mueller III’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 destabilizing 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 state-owned 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 the energy giant Gazprom and the 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 money-laundering charges. A top executive at a U.S. company affiliated with Vekselberg donated to the Trump inauguration fund, and Vekselberg attended the inauguration.
Other people whose names have surfaced in connection with the Russia investigation also ended up on the Treasury’s list. Konstantin Kosachev, a Russian lawmaker who led soft-power initiatives for the government and surfaced in a now-famous dossier alleging the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin during the 2016 election, was sanctioned Friday. So was Alexander Torshin, a little-known deputy central bank governor who rose to public interest in the United States only after his efforts to promote gun rights in the United States 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 sanctioned top national security officials
The sanctions freeze any assets the individuals or entities named hold in the United States and prohibit U.S. citizens from conducting business with them — even if they work for international companies outside the United States.