The US administration is planning to impose sanction on Russia, which will be the first retaliatory action against the Kremlin for last hacking operation of Russian group in 2020. The US administration believes that Russian hackers have badly infected widely used software with malicious code, enabling them to access the networks of at least nine agencies in what the U.S. officials believe was an intelligence gathering operation, aimed at mining government secrets.
Besides that hack, the U.S. officials last month alleged that Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized influence operations to help Donald Trump in his unsuccessful bid for reelection as president, though there’s no evidence Russia or anyone else changed votes or manipulated the outcome. The sanction was expected much before, but Biden administration foreshadowed it for a long time and now also, it is not clear what will be the exact sanctions on Russia as per the plan. However, the US officials are expecting both, seen and unseen sanction, presumably intended to send a clear retributive message to Russia, and to deter similar acts in the future, come amid an already tense relationship between the two countries.
It remained unclear whether the U.S. actions would actually result in changed behavior, especially since past measures by the U.S. have failed to bring an end to Russian hacking. The Obama administration expelled diplomats from the U.S. in 2016 in response to interference in that year’s presidential election. And though, Trump was often reluctant to criticize Putin, his administration also expelled diplomats in 2018 for Russia’s alleged poisoning of an ex-intelligence officer in Britain. On the other hand, the U.S. officials are still struggling with the aftereffects of the SolarWinds intrusion, which affected the US agencies including the Treasury, Justice, Energy and Homeland Security departments, and are still assessing what information may have been stolen. The breach exposed vulnerabilities in the supply chain as well as weaknesses in the federal government’s own cyber defenses.
Biden has already sanctioned seven mid-level and senior Russian officials along with many government entities, over a nearly fatal nerve-agent attack on opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his subsequent jailing. President Joe Biden told Putin this week in their second call to “de-escalate tensions” following a Russian military buildup on Ukraine’s border, and said the U.S. would act firmly in defense of its national interests regarding Russian intrusions and election interference in the last election held in the US.
