Trump levies new rules

Russia faces fresh sanctions

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday imposed fresh sanctions on Russian government hackers and spy agencies to punish Moscow for interfering in the 2016 presidential election and for a cyberattack against Ukraine and other countries last year that officials have characterized as “the most destructive and costly” in history.

Sanctions also were imposed on individuals known as “trolls” and the Russian organizations — including the Internet Research Agency — that supported their efforts to undermine the election. Additionally, the administration alerted the public that Russia is targeting the U.S. energy grid with computer malware that could sabotage the systems.

Taken together, the moves represent the administration’s most significant actions to date against Russia for its aggression against the United States, though analysts said their impact is mostly symbolic and noted that a number of the individuals and groups had already been subject to sanctions. Nonetheless, officials hope the actions will help deter tampering with this year’s midterm elections while signaling to Russia that Washington will not allow its attacks to go

unchallenged.

“The administration is confronting and countering malign Russian cyber activity, including their attempted interference in U.S. elections, destructive cyberattacks, and intrusions targeting critical infrastructure,” said Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. “These targeted sanctions are a part of a broader effort to address the ongoing nefarious attacks emanating from Russia.”

The sanctions stand in contrast to Trump’s reluctance to blame the Kremlin for its interference in the 2016 presidential race despite the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Moscow did so.

The White House said it would remain tough on Russia “until they decide to change their behavior.”

At the same time, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders left open the possibility of better U.S.-Russia cooperation, arguing that “if we can work together to combat world threats on things like North Korea, then we should.”

The sanctions came as the United States, France and Germany joined Britain in denouncing Russia for a poison attack that has left a former Russian spy and his daughter comatose in a Salisbury, England, hospital. On Wednesday, Britain set expulsions for 23 Russian diplomats in retaliation for that attack.

The outgoing head of the National Security Agency and U. S. Cyber Command has warned that if the United States does not take punitive or deterrent action against Russia, Russia’s malicious activity will continue.

For those targeted, the sanctions freeze all assets under U.S. jurisdiction, U.S. individuals are barred from engaging in transactions with them, and they may not travel into the United States. Mnuchin said his department intends to impose additional sanctions to hold Russian officials and oligarchs “accountable for their destabilizing activities by severing their access to the U.S. financial system.”

Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, told the Interfax news agency Thursday that Moscow was prepared for the new round of sanctions. Moscow will craft a response, he said.

Ryabkov suggested that the Trump administration had timed the action to taint this weekend’s presidential election in Russia, in which President Vladimir Putin is expected to win an overwhelming victory.

“It is tied to U.S. internal disorder, tied of course to our electoral calendar,” Ryabkov was quoted as saying by the Russian state news agency Tass.

Army Lt. Gen. Paul Nakasone, Trump’s nominee to lead the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, said Thursday that the government should take stronger action to prevent Russian interference in future U.S. elections.

Nakasone thus joined America’s current spy chiefs in urging the administration to boost cyber defenses — and go on the offense — to block the computer hacking and other digital tactics that U.S. intelligence agencies say Russian operatives used in a bid to help Trump win the White House in 2016.

“Unless the calculus changes, we should expect continued issues,” Nakasone told the Senate Intelligence Committee at his confirmation hearing.

If confirmed, Nakasone would replace Navy Adm. Mike Rogers. He would helm the sprawling systems in charge of intercepting foreign communications, protecting U.S. government secrets, disrupting adversaries’ online activity and conducting digital warfare.

Russia hawks in Congress deemed the sanctions too little, too late.

“Even more must be done,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S.C. Fellow Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona called the action “overdue.”

Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the new sanctions were an important step. “As our midterm elections approach, we must send a clear message that attacks on our political process will not be tolerated,” he said. And Democrats homed in on the fact that the list of Russians hit with sanctions included all of those indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. That shows the administration believes the investigation is legitimate, they argued.

Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer of New York said the sanctions prove that Mueller’s “investigation is not a ‘witch hunt’ as the president and his allies have claimed.” He said, “It’s more clear than ever that the president must not interfere with the special counsel’s investigation in any way.”

NEW SANCTIONS

In all, the new sanctions target 19 people and five organizations — though 10 had been previously hit with sanctions, mostly by President Barack Obama’s administration.

Many were indicted last month by Mueller, who is also investigating whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin to sway last year’s presidential race outcome. Mueller accused 13 individuals and three entities of spreading propaganda using social media and other means, with the goal of sowing discord.

A separate set of sanctions was imposed on two Russian spy agencies. Officials said the FSB, a successor to the KGB, used its cyber tools to target U. S. government officials, including cybersecurity, diplomatic, military and White House personnel. The other is the GRU, a military spy organization, which officials said was “directly involved in interfering in the 2016 U.S. election” through cyber activities.

Those sanctions mark the first use of a law Congress passed in June to, among other things, punish Russia for its election-year interference. Trump, after balking, signed the law but issued two statements saying he believed the legislation was “seriously flawed.”

In January, as the law required, the administration released a widely anticipated report on Russian oligarchs, but it was dismissed by critics in Congress and by former Obama administration officials as a “cut-and-paste” job from open sources.

The GRU also was behind a June cyberattack, delivered through a mock ransomware virus dubbed NotPetya, that wiped data from the computers of banks, energy companies, senior government officials and an airport. On Thursday, the government imposed sanctions on the GRU and six of its senior officials in response to that attack. NotPetya hit systems in Ukraine the hardest and was viewed as an effort to disrupt that country’s financial system amid its ongoing war with separatists loyal to the Kremlin. U.S. companies, including shipping giant FedEx and the pharmaceutical firm Merck, also were affected, losing hundreds of millions of dollars in earnings.

To date, that attack has cost companies around the world $1.2 billion in revenue, according to the cybersecurity firm Cybereason. One U.S. official put the toll at $10 billion.

“Today’s announcement is largely a name and shame exercise to show the Kremlin that the United States is closely following what it is doing,” said Andrew Weiss, a Russia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Given that deniability is a key part of the Russian playbook, there’s a question about whether that works. So far the pattern is not great. We keep seeing bad behavior by Moscow.”

The sanctions “have no bite,” said Michael Carpenter, a former Pentagon and White House official who worked on Russia policy.

“Such narrowly targeted sanctions don’t impact Russia’s economy at all, and that seems to have been the administration’s intent,” he said. “Russia’s intelligence services don’t exactly have retail bank accounts in the United States, so this will have a negligible impact on their operations.”

He also decried the administration’s “mixed messaging strategy” in which “Cabinet-level officials have ventured forth to condemn Russia’s subversion of democratic institutions, but the president himself continues to refrain from personally saying anything negative” about Putin.

Russia’s mounting aggression in cyberspace is part of a larger “hybrid warfare” strategy that marries traditional military means with digital tools to achieve its goal of regional dominance.

The Treasury Department noted that it continues to pressure Russia for its ongoing efforts to destabilize Ukraine and occupy Crimea, and for its “endemic corruption and human rights abuses.” To date, officials said, the administration has imposed sanctions on more than 100 individuals and entities under authorities specific to Ukraine and Russia.

Eric Rosenbach, a senior Pentagon official in the Obama administration, said it was “extremely important” to impose sanctions on Russia in response to the NotPetya attack.

“The United States cannot stand by and watch the Russians use Ukraine as a cyber test range for destructive malware that then proliferates,” said Rosenbach, now director of the Defending Digital Democracy Project at Harvard’s Belfer Center.

The six GRU officials targeted for sanctions are Chief Igor Korobov, First Deputy Chief Igor Kostyukov, Deputy Chief Sergey Gizunov, First Deputy Chief Vladimir Alexseyev, and senior officials Sergei Afanasyev and Grigoriy Molchanov.