US Imposes Sanctions On Russia Over Election Interference

The Obama administration announced Thursday a new series of sanctions against Russian intelligence entities and agents they say are responsible for hacks into the Democratic National Committee and related servers.

In addition to the sanctions, 35 Russian operatives will be expelled from the country and listed as “persona non grata.” The operatives, who are based out of the Russian embassy in Washington and the Russian consulate in San Francisco, have been informed they have 72 hours to leave the United States along with their families.

Specific sanctions are being applied to the leadership of GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. A total of nine Russian entities and persons have been targeted by the sanctions, including two private individuals who the U.S. government accuses of hacking American companies for financial gain.

“Sanctioned individuals include Igor Valentinovich Korobov, the current Chief of the GRU; Sergey Aleksandrovich Gizunov, Deputy Chief of the GRU; Igor Olegovich Kostyukov, a First Deputy Chief of the GRU; and Vladimir Stepanovich Alexseyev, also a First Deputy Chief of the GRU,” said a statement from the White House released Thursday afternoon.

The FSB, Russia’s other major foreign intelligence agency, is also the recipient of sanctions. According to a White House fact sheet, the FSB assisted the GRU in “tampering, altering, or causing a misappropriation of information with the purpose or effect of interfering with the 2016 U.S. election processes.”

The president amended a previous executive order allowing him to respond to cyberattacks in order to apply these sanctions.

The U.S. government will also shut down two Russian government-owned compounds –one in Maryland, and the other in New York. According to the fact sheet, the shut downs and expulsions are in response to “harassment of our diplomatic personnel in Russia” that have gone “far beyond international diplomatic norms of behavior.”

The Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are expected to soon release a report into Russian hacking.

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