U.S. sanctions Russia for hacking attack
Biden expels 10 diplomats, restricts Moscow’s ability to borrow money
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Thursday imposed extensive new sanctions on Russia and formally blamed the country’s SVR intelligence agency for the sophisticated hacking operation that breached U.S. government agencies and the nation’s largest companies.
The sanctions included measures intended to make it more difficult for Russia to take part in the global economy if it continued its campaign of disruptive actions, including in cyberspace and on its border with Ukraine.
While the sanctions might not bite hard immediately, White House officials said they left themselves room to squeeze Moscow’s ability to borrow money on global markets if tensions escalate.
“I chose to be proportionate,” Biden said at the White House, describing how he had warned President Vladimir Putin of Russia of what was coming in a phone conversation
Tuesday.
“The United States is not looking to kick off a cycle of escalation and conflict with Russia. We want a stable, predictable relationship,” Biden added, offering to meet Putin in person this summer in Europe.
The Russians didn’t immediately respond to that offer.
The measures Biden announced included sanctions on 32 entities and individuals for disinformation efforts and for carrying out Moscow’s interference in the 2020 presidential election.
Ten Russian diplomats, most of them identified as intelligence operatives, were expelled from the Russian Embassy in Washington. And the administration banned U.S. banks from buying newly issued Russian government debt.
The U.S. also joined European partners in imposing sanctions on eight people and entities associated with Russia’s occupation of Crimea, the peninsula Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014. The sanctions come
amid a large Russian military buildup on the border of Ukraine and in Crimea.
The most significant sanction was to stop U.S. financial firms from dealing in newly issued Russian debt, a restriction that goes into effect June 14 to give institutions time to prepare for the ban, and it’s more of a warning shot than a sharp penalty.
But it doesn’t stop U.S. institutions from dealing in previously issued Russian bonds. And it doesn’t, for now, apply to foreign banks or investment firms — the way the United States extended the reach of sanctions on Iran.
Past rounds of sanctions under previous administrations failed to make Moscow think twice about increasingly aggressive actions.
On Thursday, Russia promised retaliation.
In Moscow, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said a response would be “inevitable,” but she didn’t immediately disclose what it would entail. The U.S. ambassador was summoned to a meeting with Russian officials, Zakharova said.
“Such aggressive behavior will of course receive a decisive response,” Zakharova said. “In Washington, they should know there will be a cost for the degradation of bilateral relations. Responsibility for what is happening lies wholly with the United States.”
At a moment that the United States finds itself in simultaneous confrontations with Moscow and Beijing that have echoes of the Cold War, the action was Biden’s first effort to lay down a red line against what he called “totally inappropriate” behavior.
It came after four years in which former President Donald Trump repeatedly cast doubt on intelligence findings that Russia was culpable for cyberattacks, poisonings and disinformation campaigns.
It was also the first time the U.S. government placed the blame for the SolarWinds hacking attack, which penetrated U.S. government agencies and corporations, right at the feet of Putin. He directly controls the SVR, the same intelligence agency blamed by the U.S. for the first of two major hackings into the Democratic National Committee six years ago.
Inside U.S. intelligence agencies, there have been warnings that the SolarWinds attack could give Russia a further pathway for malicious activity against government agencies and corporations.
While Thursday’s actions were in response to the SolarWinds attack and election interference, Biden administration officials said they also had sent diplomatic messages to Russia expressing concern about intelligence reports that Russia had paid bounties to encourage Taliban attacks on U.S. troops. But a statement from the White House said intelligence agencies had only low-to-moderate confidence in their assessment, because it was based in part on information from detainees.
The actions in response to election interference included penalizing Russian outlets that the U.S. government has said spread disinformation. All of the groups are, at least in part, controlled by Russian intelligence, including NewsFront, InfoRos and the Strategic Culture Foundation, a think tank that publishes pro-government articles, U.S. officials said.
The State Department has said the Strategic Culture Foundation is directed by the SVR and that it published “fringe voices and conspiracy theories in English.” The foundation also published articles critical of former Obama administration official Evelyn Farkas as she was running for Congress last year.
Farkas said that while some people thought the sanctions weren’t as tough as they could have been, she believed the administration got it right.
“We are in the middle of not just punishing Russia for past deeds,” she said, “but trying to deter new ones, meaning a new invasion of Ukraine.”