United States imposes sanctions on 19 Russian individuals and five groups

The Trump administration’s sanctions came roughly a month after special counsel Robert Mueller indicted 13 Russians and three Russian companies in connection with 2016 USA election interference.

A source told the news outlet Thursday that the subpoena sought to “clean up” and ensure that the special counsel’s office received all related documents. The delay had led to questions over President Donald Trump’s willingness to punish Moscow.

But it’s unclear whether the two parties will agree, ultimately, on whether there was co-ordination between Trump’s campaign and Russian Federation.

The Treasury Department said the new sanctions action “counters Russia’s continuing destabilizing activities, ranging from interference in the 2016 US election to conducting destructive cyber-attacks, including the NotPetya attack, a cyber-attack attributed to the Russian military”. Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the Russian oligarch known as “Putin’s chef”, is being sanctioned for the third time after previous designations under the Obama and Trump administrations.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is also looking into whether Mr Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians, an allegation the president denies.

Senator Maria Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, asked the Trump administration earlier this month to provide a threat assessment gauging Russian capabilities to breach the USA electric grid.

Russia’s two main government intelligence agencies, the FSB and the GRU, as well as six GRU operatives, were also sanctioned in connection with the cyber attacks.

NYT report also comes same day Treasury Department finally saw fit to slap new sanctions on 24 Russian entities and individuals for interfering in the 2016 election.

That bill required the Trump administration to identify companies and individuals that do business with Russia’s defense and intelligence sectors by October, and impose sanctions on appropriate entities by the end of January 2018. America and Britain last month blamed the Russian military for that attack. The U.S. attributes that attack to the Russian military. “The United States can not 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. “I spoke with the Prime Minister and we are in deep discussions”.

Other Russia analysts said it was not clear whether Trump had fundamentally changed his stance.

It’s “something that should never, ever happen, and we’re taking it very seriously, as I think are many others”, he said.

But doubts about the veracity of that statement began to emerge last August, when The New York Times published emails from a long-time business associate of Trump called Felix Sater, who boasted that he had lined up financing for a Trump Tower in Moscow with VTB Bank, which is under United States sanctions.

Trump signed the bill reluctantly in August, claiming it impinged upon his executive powers and could dampen his attempts to improve ties with Moscow. Members of Congress expressed frustration that their law, which passed nearly unanimously, wasn’t being enacted.

A White House National Security Council spokesman did not respond when asked what specifically prompted the public blaming of Russian Federation.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, asked if Russian Federation is a friend or foe, told reporters, “Russia is going to have to make that determination”.

While more sanctions are expected, it is not clear if the Trump policy toward Russian Federation is changing, especially given Trump’s unpredictability, said a third official, who is involved in talks on next steps.

“Appointments of senior administration officials need to be approved by the Senate, after which the newly appointed are sworn in”, Ryabkov pointed out.

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