US sanctions Russian spy units
HONOLULU— The United States on Thursday sanctioned Russia’s leading intelligence agencies GRU and FSB, kicked out 35 Russian diplomats, and shut down a pair of Russian compounds in a sweeping set of punishments for Russia for hacking the US presidential campaign. Moscow called the penalties “a clumsy yet aggressive attempt to harm Russian-American ties.”
HONOLULU— The United States struck back at Russia on Thursday for hacking the US presidential campaign with a sweeping set of punishments targeting Russia’s spy agencies and diplomats.
The US government said Russia must bear costs for its actions, but Moscow called the Obama administration “losers” and threatened retaliation.
A month after an election the United States says Russia tried to sway for Donald Trump, US President Barack Obama sanctioned the GRU and FSB, leading Russian intelligence agencies the United States said were involved.
Those sanctions could easily be pulled back by Trump, who has insisted that Obama and Democrats are merely attempting to delegitimize his election.
Covert counterattack
In an elaborately coordinated response by at least five federal agencies, the Obama administration also sought to expose Russia’s cybertactics with a detailed technical report and hinted it might still launch a covert counterattack.
“All Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions,” Obama said, adding “such activities have consequences.”
He said the response wasn’t over and the United States could take further, covert action—a thinly veiled reference to a counterstrike in cyberspace the United States has been considering.
Trump issued a statement saying it was “time for our country to move on to bigger and better things.” Yet in the face of newly public evidence, he suggested he was keeping an open mind.
“In the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation,” Trump said.
Expulsions, shutdowns
As part of the punishment, the United States also kicked out 35 Russian diplomats who the United States said were actually intelligence operatives, and shut down a pair of Russian compounds, in New York and Maryland.
The United States said those actions were in response to Russia’s harassment of US diplomats, calling it part of a pattern of aggression that included the cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta.
It was the strongest action the Obama administration has taken to date to retaliate for a cyberattack, and more comprehensive than last year’s sanctions on North Korea after it hacked Sony Pic- tures Entertainment.
The new 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’s behavior.
Russia, which denied the hacking allegations, called the penalties a clumsy yet aggressive attempt to “harm RussianAmerican ties.”
Putin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia would take into account the fact that Trump would soon replace Obama as it drafted retaliatory measures.
Low point in relations
The day marked a low point for US relations with Russia, which 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 spokesperson, took to Facebook to call the Obama administration “a group of foreign policy losers, angry and ignorant.”
It was unlikely the new sanctions, while symbolically significant, would have a major impact on Russian spy operations.
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 United States, and any activities they undertake would likely be covert and hard to identify.
“On its face, this is more than a slap on the wrists, but hardly an appropriate response to an unprecedented attack on our electoral system,” said Stewart Baker, a cy- bersecurity lawyer and former National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security official.
Hacking to continue
Indeed, senior Obama administration officials said that even with the penalties, the United States had reason to believe Russia would keep hacking other nations’ elections and might well try to hack American elections again in 2018 or 2020.
The officials briefed reporters on a conference call on condition of anonymity.
Though the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security issued a joint report on “Russian malicious cyberactivity”—replete with examples of malware code used by the Russians—the administration still has not released a broader report Obama has promised detailing Russia’s efforts to interfere with US elections.
The report has been eagerly anticipated by those hoping to make it politically untenable for Trump to continue questioning whether Russia was really involved.
But US officials said those seeking more detail about who the United States has determined did the hacking need look only to the list of sanctions targets, which includes the GRU head, his three deputies, and two Russian nationals wanted by the FBI for cybercrimes.
The move puts Trump in the position of having to decide whether to roll back the measures once in office, and US officials acknowledged that Trump could use his executive authorities to do so.
Still, they suggested that building the case against Russia now would make it harder for Trump to justify easing up.