New sanctions against Russia kick in but US elects to punish nobody
State Department officials said the threat of sanctions had been deterrent enough, and that ‘sanctions on specific entities or individuals will not need to be imposed’
The Trump administration late on Monday released a long-awaited list of 114 Russian politicians and 96 “oligarchs” who have flourished under President Vladimir Putin, fulfilling a demand by Congress that the US punish Moscow for interfering in the 2016 US election.
Yet the administration paired that move with a surprising announcement that it would not punish anybody – for now – under new sanctions retaliating for the election meddling. Some US lawmakers accused President Donald Trump of giving Russia a free pass, fuelling further questions about whether the president is unwilling to confront America’s cold war foe.
Known informally as the “Putin list”, the seven-page unclassified document is a who’s who of politically connected elite Russians. The idea, as envisioned by Congress, is to name-and-shame those believed to be benefiting from Putin’s tenure as the United States works to isolate his government diplomatically and economically.
Being on the list does not trigger any US sanctions on the individuals, although more than a dozen are already targeted under earlier sanctions.
Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is among the 114 senior political figures in Russia’s government who made the list, along with 42 of Putin’s aides, cabinet ministers such as Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and top officials in Russia’s leading spy agencies, the FSB and GRU. The chiefs of major state-owned companies, including energy giant Rosneft and Sberbank, are also on the list.