US goes on the offensive
The United States has struck at Russia for allegedly hacking the US presidential campaign with sweeping punishments.
THE United States has struck at Russia for allegedly hacking the US presidential campaign with a sweeping set of punishments targeting Russia’s spy agencies and diplomats.
Moscow responded by calling the Obama administration “losers” and threatened retaliation.
President Barack Obama sanctioned the GRU and FSB, leading Russian intelligence agencies accused of being involved. Those sanctions could easily be pulled back by Trump, who has insisted that Obama and the Democrats are merely trying to delegitimise his election.
In an elaborately co-ordinated response by at least five federal agencies, the Obama administration also sought to expose Russia’s cyber tactics with a detailed technical report and hinted it might still launch a covert cyber counter-attack.
Trump issued a statement saying it was “time for our country to move on to bigger and better things”.
As part of the punishment, the US also kicked out 35 Russian diplomats whom the US said were actually intelligence operatives, and shut down a pair of Russian compounds, in New York and Maryland.
It was the strongest action the Obama administration has taken to date to retaliate for a cyber attack, and more comprehensive than last year’s sanctions on North Korea after it hacked Sony Pictures Entertainment.
The penalties add to existing US sanctions over Russia’s actions in Ukraine, which have impaired Russia’s economy but had limited impact on President Vladimir Putin.
Russia, which denied the hacking allegations, called the penalties a clumsy yet aggressive attempt to “harm RussianAmerican ties”.
Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia would take into account Mr Trump would soon replace Mr Obama as it drafts retaliatory measures.
The day marked a low point for US-Russia relations that have suffered during Obama’s years as he and Putin tussled over Ukraine, Edward Snowden and Russia’s support for Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Maria Zakharova, a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, took to Facebook to call the Obama administration “a group of foreign policy losers, angry and ignorant”.
The sanctions freeze any US assets and block Americans from doing business with them. But Russian law bars the spy agencies from having assets in the US, and any activities they undertake would be covert and hard to identify.
The move puts Trump in the position of having to decide whether to roll back the measures once in office.