New U.S. sanctions imposed on Putin’s inner circle

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration imposed new sanctions on seven of Russia’s richest men and 17 top government officials Friday in the latest effort to punish President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle for interference in the 2016 election and other Russian aggressions.

The sanctions are designed to penalize some of Russia’s richest industrialists, who are seen in the West as enriching themselves from Putin’s increasingly authoritarian administration.

They grow out of an oddly disjointed policy toward Russia on the part of the Trump administration: While President Trump continues to call for good relations with Putin, Congress and much of the rest of the administration are pushing through increasingly punitive efforts that are sinking relations with Moscow to lows not seen in years.

“The Russian government operates for the disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and government elites,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said. “Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government’s destabilizing activities.”

Among those sanctioned are Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch who once had close ties to Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.

Also sanctioned was Suleiman Kerimov, a financier close to Putin; Vladimir Bogdanov, a top executive of Surgutneftegaz, a Russian oil company; Igor Rotenberg, another oil executive; Kirill Shamalov, an energy executive who married Putin’s daughter, Katerina Tikhonova; Andrei Skoch, a deputy of the Russian Federation’s State Duma; and Viktor Vekselberg, chairman of the Renova Group, a Russian investment firm.

The sanctions have been under consideration for some time and were not imposed solely because of the recent poisoning in England of a former Russian spy but rather “in response to the totality of the Russian government’s ongoing and increasingly brazen pattern of malign activity around the world,” a senior administration official said in a conference call with reporters, adding: “But most importantly this is in response to Russia’s continuing attack to subvert Western democracies.” The nerve-gas poisoning of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent and his daughter, is seen as part of a pattern of increasingly aggressive moves by Putin, including the seizure of Crimea, military interventions in Georgia, Ukraine and Syria, tacit support for Syrian President Bashar Assad’s chemical attacks on his own populace, a direct attack by Russian mercenaries on U.S. troops in Syria and the hacking of elections in the U.S. and Europe.