US issues ‘Putin list’ of Russian politicians, oligarchs

Russian President Vladimir Putin (left)

The Trump administration has 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 U.S. punish Moscow for interfering in the 2016 U.S. election.

The political list is the entire presidential administration, as listed on the Kremlin website, and the Russian Cabinet, while the oligarch’s list is a carbon copy of the top of the Forbes magazine’s Russian billionaires’ list. The publication of the so-called “Putin list” angered and dismayed many in Moscow.

Yet the administration paired that move with a surprising announcement that it had decided not to punish anybody — for now — under new sanctions retaliating for the election-meddling. Some U.S. lawmakers accused President Donald Trump of giving Russia a free pass, fueling further questions about whether the president is unwilling to confront Moscow.

The idea of the seven-page unclassified document, as envisioned by Congress, is to name- and-shame those believed to be benefiting from Putin’s tenure, just as the United States works to isolate his government diplomatically and economically.

Being on the list doesn’t trigger any U.S. 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 CEOs of major state-owned companies, including energy giant Rosneft and Sberbank, are also on the list.

So are 96 wealthy Russians deemed “oligarchs” by the Treasury Department, which said each is believed to have assets totaling USD1 billion or more. Some are the most famous of wealthy Russians, among them tycoons Roman Abramovich and Mikhail Prokhorov, who challenged Putin in the 2012 election. Aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a figure in the Russia investigation over his ties to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, is included.

Russian politicians have expressed dismay at finding that the list included the entire Russian government.

Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich told Russian news agencies yesterday that he was not surprised to find his name on the list, too, saying that it “looks like a ‘who’s who’ book.” Dvorkovich stopped short of saying how Russia would react to it, saying that the government would “monitor the situation.”

In a Facebook post, Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the Federation Council’s foreign affairs committee, said U.S. intelligence failed to find compromising material on Russian politicians and “ended up copying the Kremlin phone book.”

Kosachev criticized the U.S. government for harming Russia-
U.S. relations, saying that “the consequences will be toxic and undermine prospects for cooperation for years ahead,” adding that the list displays “political paranoia” of the U.S. establishment.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who came to prominence thanks to his investigations into official corruption, tweeted yesterday that he was “glad that these [people] have been officially recognized on the international level as crooks and thieves.” Navalny in his investigations has exposed what he described as close ties between government officials and some of the billionaires on the list.

In the works for months, the list has induced fear among rich Russians who are concerned that it could lead to U.S. sanctions or to being informally blacklisted in the global financial system. It triggered a fierce lobbying campaign, with Russia hawks in Congress pushing the administration to include certain names and lobbyists hired by Russian businessmen urging the administration to keep their clients off.

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.” MDT/AP