US has played into Putin’s hands
The much-scoffed ‘Kremlin Report’ on Russian interference in American politics serves only to highlight Trump-era paranoia
CONTRARY to Russia’s expectations, its relations with the US have not improved under President Donald Trump.
The political pandemonium in the US has given Trump a free hand and tension between Washington and Moscow keeps growing amid constant US attacks on Russia – not only for the crisis in the adjacent south-eastern regions of Ukraine, but also for alleged interference in the American presidential election.
Apart from real sanctions against Russian state-run companies, Washington has cooked up the so-called “Kremlin report”, which lists virtually all top-level government officials in
Russia, including the prime minister and the foreign minister, and Russian billionaires.
This does not mean immediate sanctions against them, but the threat will hang over them like the Sword of Damocles.
Experts believe this is an attempt to incite the Russian elite to rise against President Vladimir Putin ahead of the presidential election in the country, but analysts are convinced it will lead nowhere.
How will Moscow respond? Will it draw up a similar list or will it come up with asymmetrical countermeasures? It is not clear yet.
But the Kremlin has long been talking about the need to stop the escalation of tension between the two countries.
On Monday last week, the US Department of the Treasury sent to the Congress five follow-up reports on the implementation of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (Caatsa), which imposes harsher sanctions on Russia, Iran and North Korea. They also include the controversial “Kremlin report”.
The report lists 210 Russian top officials who Washington believes are linked to the Russian authorities and Vladimir Putin personally.
These include 114 toplevel government officials and heads of state-owned companies, as well as the 96 wealthiest men whose holdings exceed $1 billion (R12bn), some of whom are believed to be in Putin’s
“inner circle”. The report also has a secret list of officials whose names have not been disclosed.
An unnamed US State Department official has said that further sanctions may be directed against foreign states and companies that trade with the listed Russian enterprises and maintain contact with the individuals mentioned in the report.
On January 19, the US government expanded the list of Russian individuals and organisations subject to sanctions owing to the situation in south-eastern Ukraine.
It now includes 21 Russian and Ukrainian citizens and nine companies, and details sanctions against another 12 legal entities, including Alexey Mordashov’s Power Machines and the Polish company, Doncoaltrade, which bought coal from the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics in war-torn south-eastern Ukraine.
The US Treasury Department has said that the “Kremlin report” will not mean immediate new sanctions. Many give credit for this to Trump who, while being a hostage of the Congress, is trying to avoid further escalation of tension with Moscow.
But experts believe that the report may make it harder for those mentioned in it to do their business, particularly by limiting their access to foreign financial institutions.
Russian experts said earlier that the “Kremlin report” and new sanctions might have negative consequences but they would not be critical as the Russian economy had already adapted to the new situation.
The Kremlin views this as an attempt to make Russian business revolt against Putin.
On Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said that by imposing new sanctions against Russian companies and individuals, the US government was trying to drive a wedge between
Putin and the Russian business elite ahead of the coming presidential election slated for March.
He said the Kremlin was unaware of any member of the Russian business elite who would hold Putin and his closest associates responsible for the Western sanctions against their country.
Russia keeps saying that the policy of sanctions is counter-productive. It had forced Western investors to pull out and lose the Russian energy market, thus allowing companies from other parts of the world to move in and take their place, Energy Minister Alexander Novak said at the just-concluded Davos Economic Forum.
The head of the Federation Council International Relations Committee, Konstantin Kosachev, spoke sarcastically of Washington’s “Kremlin report”.
“The first glance at the American report creates the impression that having failed to find the long-promised and credible compromising evidence against Russian government officials, US security services have simply copied the Kremlin telephone directory,” he said on his Facebook page.
In his opinion, the publication of the report only proved that the current bout of political paranoia in the US would not end any time soon and that relations with Moscow would not normalise until the present generation of politicians changes in Washington.
“Its purpose is to provoke an elementary split among the Russian elites,” said Gevorg Mirzayan, an associate professor at the Financial University, told Kommersant FM radio. “My personal opinion is that the US has actually played in favour of the Russian president. Regrettably for the US, they have lost the knack of acting subtly and delicately. Instead of manipulating these elites covertly through their bank accounts and property in the West, they are actually greatly helping Vladimir Putin in his very righteous efforts to bring Russian elites’ assets and property back to Russia.”
There seems to be no final decision yet on how Moscow should respond to the Kremlin report.
“We are considering all possible options and all of them will go to the president if and when it comes not only to a verbal but also material response to possible hostile actions against Russia,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said.
“We will have to see and analyse follow-up steps after the publication. Moscow will definitely study these steps in order to protect our interests and the interests of our companies in the best possible way,” presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said.
Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich believes that “there is no reason to act right away” because this is not a list of sanctions but a list that will be used for further action.
Mirzayan also thinks that “the best way for Russia to respond would be to allow the Americans to do what they are doing because such conspicuous disrespect for World Trade Organization norms and global world rules established by the Americans themselves only shows everybody, including their allies, that they can no longer do fair business with the current US administration”.