WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama took an unprecedented step Thursday in responding to “the Russian government’s aggressive harassment of U.S. officials and cyber operations aimed at the U.S. election.” About an hour later Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country would consider retaliatory steps against the United States’ sanctions.
Obama said there had been numerous public and private warnings issued to the Russian government beforehand about interfering with our election process, and now “necessary and appropriate” actions must be taken in “response to efforts to harm U.S. interests in violation of established international norms of behavior.”
He said that his administration made public in October that Russia had tried to interfere in our election, and that the data theft and actions must have been “directed by the highest levels of the Russian government.” He added that American diplomats in Russia have been harassed by Russian police and security services, which is “unacceptable.”
Earlier this month Obama vowed to take retaliatory actions.
First, the president issued and executive order extending authority to respond to certain cyber activities aimed at impacting U.S. elections, and those of our allies.
Based on that power, Obama announced the U.S. would sanction nine entities and people, including the GRU and the FSB — Russia’s intelligence services — four individual officers of the GRU, and three companies that assisted the GRU with its hack.
The Treasury Department also announced that two Russian individuals who have been determined to have been involved with using cyber attacks to cause “misappropriation of funds and personal identifying information.”
The State Department will also shut down two Russian compounds in Maryland and New York that are used for Russian intelligence gathering purposes.
Lastly, 35 Russian intelligence operatives have been declared “persona non grata.”
During the announcement, Obama said, “all Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions.”
Also, in the statement, Obama said that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are releasing declassified technical information about Russia’s civilian and military intelligence cyber activities so that companies that create software to defend internet networks in the U.S. could identify, detect and disrupt Russia’s future cyber activities.
Obama said he would announce further actions against the Russian government, and that some actions wouldn’t be publicized. He will also issue a report to Congress about Russia’s involvement not just in this election, but in previous ones, something that a bipartisan group of senators had called for.
Here’s the full statement:
Later, Putin’s spokesman said Obama actions are “unpredictable” and “aggressive foreign policy.”
“Such steps of the U.S. administration that has three weeks left to work are aimed at two things: to further harm Russian-American ties, which are at a low point as it is, as well as, obviously, deal a blow on the foreign policy plans of the incoming administration of the president-elect.”
Putin will take a look at the sanctions and determine if he thinks Russia should take retaliatory steps.
Meanwhile, Russia’s chairman of foreign affairs said the country would wait and see what President-elect Donald Trump’s response is before taking action.
Konstantin Kosachev told a local news agency that Russia “needs to consider the circumstances of the transition period and a possible reaction of the U.S. president-elect.”
To that end, Trump did release his own statement on Thursday, saying that it’s “time for our country to move on to bigger and better things.”
However, despite seeming to disagree with the sanctions, he did say he’d meet with U.S. intelligence officials next week “in order to be updated on the facts of this situation.”
Additional reporting by the Associated Press.
