US President Barack Obama on Thursday struck back at Russia for its alleged effort to influence the 2016 US election, imposing sanctions against its intelligence services and expelling 35 diplomats who were suspected to be behind the cyber attacks on the Democratic National Committee.
The US administration also penalized four top officers of Russia’s powerful military intelligence, GRU.
The sweeping action will also be taken against two suspected hackers, both wanted by the FBI in earlier cybercrime cases, and three companies that allegedly provided support to the GRU’s cyber operations.
Intelligence agencies have concluded that the G.R.U. ordered the attacks on the Democratic National Committee and other political organizations, with the approval of the Kremlin, and ultimately enabled the publication of the emails it harvested, The New York Times reported.
According to US State Department officials, the expulsion of 35 diplomats and their families was in response to the harassment of US diplomats in Russia.
“The diplomatic sanctions today were in response to the diplomatic harassment from Russia we’ve seen over the past two years,” White House deputy press secretary Eric Schultz told media.
Russia criticised the move and called it illegitimate.
“As we said before, we consider such a decision and such sanctions groundless and illegitimate from the point of view of international law,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the Interfax news agency.
