US sanctions Russia over massive cyberattack and election interference

WASHINGTON — In its first attempt to punish Moscow’s attacks on U.S. elections and cybernetworks, the Biden administration on Thursday announced stinging economic sanctions against a host of Russian companies and individuals as well as the expulsion from the U.S. of 10 Russian intelligence officials.

As part of the punitive broadside, the U.S. for the first time officially blamed Russian intelligence for last year’s massive cyberattack on federal agencies and private companies.

The sanctions won rare bipartisan support in Washington, but it remained unclear what impact they would have on a Kremlin that has remained for the most part impervious to outside pressure.

Thursday’s announcement came two days after President Joe Biden spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin by telephone, to both warn and cajole. He cautioned that the U.S. and Europe would not stand for Russia’s massive military buildup on its border with Ukraine. And he invited his Russian counterpart to a summit in a third country.

Such a summit is probably on hold now. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, reacting in Moscow, told reporters that the sanctions are illegal, would invite “reciprocal” actions and were not conducive to a meeting of the two presidents. He also suggested Putin might withdraw his participation in next week’s climate conference hosted by the U.S.

The targets include Russian hackers believed responsible for infecting computer software widely used by government and private networks in the U.S., including the Treasury, Energy and Homeland Security departments, as part of what was called the Solarwinds breach. U.S. officials, who are still calculating the damage done and how to prevent it, alleged it was part of an intelligence-gathering mission to accrue U.S. secrets for the Russian government.

The officials also said Putin ordered cyber and disinformation campaigns to help former President Donald Trump in his unsuccessful bid for reelection. Russian intelligence operatives spread conspiracy theories to undermine faith in the process and then fanned a false narrative of widespread fraud, the Treasury Department said.

The 10 Russian diplomatic staff members who were expelled included members of the Russian intelligence services.

Sanctions will punish six Russian companies involved in cyberespionage and 32 people and entities involved in election interference, the Treasury Department said. All the targets will be barred from doing business with U.S. entities, and any assets they have in the U.S. will be frozen.

Among those named was Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian and Ukrainian political consultant known to have worked for Russian intelligence services. With the allegation against him, Thursday’s announcement added a new detail to the story of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in which Trump won the Electoral College vote.

According to the Biden administration, Kilimnik provided Russian intelligence with “sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy.” Kilimnik, an alleged Russian agent, is an associate of Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016.

Although it was previously known from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’S investigation that Manafort provided campaign information to Kilimnik, U.S. officials had not said what they believe he did with it.

The 10 Russian diplomatic staff who were expelled included members of the Russian intelligence services, the White House said.

Thursday’s sanctions did not come in response to reports that Russian operatives paid Taliban militants to hunt and kill U.S. and allied troops in Afghanistan, officials said. However, for the first time, a senior administration official said that the U.S. intelligence community now had “low to moderate” confidence that the reports were true.