US Expands Sanctions Against Russia over Elections, Cyber-Attacks, Skripal Case

The United States included eighteen Russians and four Russian information resources into its sanction lists, the Office of Foreign Assets of the US Treasury Department reported on Wednesday, TASS reported.

Russian information resources Economy Today (Ekonomika Segodnya), Federal News Agency (Federalnoe Agentstvo Novostei, Nevskiy News (Nevskiye Novosti), and USA Really were put into the sanction list, OFAC reported.

The US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated "15 members of the GRU, a previously designated Russian military intelligence organization, for their involvement in a wide range of malign activity, including attempting to interfere in the 2016 US election, efforts to undermine international organizations through cyber-enabled means, and an assassination attempt in the United Kingdom".

"These 15 operatives are being sanctioned pursuant to the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA)," the statement said, adding that "OFAC also designated a former officer of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) for having acted on behalf of sanctioned oligarch Oleg Deripaska".

"To date, this Administration has sanctioned 272 Russia-related individuals and entities for a broad range of malign activities," the statement noted.

"Today OFAC is designating Alexander Petrov (Petrov) and Ruslan Boshirov (Boshirov), the GRU officers responsible for carrying out this attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal and his daughter," the US Department of the Treasury said in a statement.

"Many governments, including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Canada, have made it clear that the Russian government was responsible for this attack," the statement added.

Britain claims that former Russian military intelligence officer convicted in Russia for spying for the UK Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were affected by a nerve gas of the Novichok class in Salisbury, England, on March 4. The British government claimed that Russia was highly likely involved in this incident. Moscow strongly dismissed all speculations on that score, saying that neither the Soviet Union nor Russia had ever had programs for making such agents.

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