US Sanctions 32 Russian Entities and Individuals Over Disinformation

US media report­ed ear­li­er this month that Pres­i­dent Biden imposed new sanc­tions on Rus­sia, tar­get­ing 32 Russ­ian enti­ties and indi­vid­u­als for dis­in­for­ma­tion efforts and for car­ry­ing out Moscow’s inter­fer­ence in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Accord­ing to a New York Times arti­cle:

April 15, 2021 Pres­i­dent Biden on Thurs­day imposed exten­sive new sanc­tions on Rus­sia and for­mal­ly blamed the country’s pre­mier intel­li­gence agency for the sophis­ti­cat­ed hack­ing oper­a­tion that breached Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment agen­cies and the nation’s largest com­pa­nies.  The sanc­tions includ­ed mea­sures intend­ed to make it more dif­fi­cult for Rus­sia to take part in the glob­al econ­o­my if it con­tin­ued its cam­paign of dis­rup­tive actions, includ­ing in cyber­space and on the bor­der of Ukraine. […]

The mea­sures Mr. Biden announced includ­ed sanc­tions on 32 enti­ties and indi­vid­u­als for dis­in­for­ma­tion efforts and for car­ry­ing out Moscow’s inter­fer­ence in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. Ten Russ­ian diplo­mats, most of them iden­ti­fied as intel­li­gence oper­a­tives, were expelled from the Russ­ian Embassy in Wash­ing­ton. And the admin­is­tra­tion banned Amer­i­can banks from pur­chas­ing new­ly issued Russ­ian gov­ern­ment debt.

Read the rest here.

Accord­ing to the US Trea­sury, fol­low­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion out­lets have been des­ig­nat­ed over dis­in­for­ma­tion efforts and inter­fer­ence in the pres­i­den­tial elections:

• South­Front
• News­Front
• The Strate­gic Cul­ture Foundation
• InfoRos
• Foun­da­tion for Nation­al Val­ues Protection
• Asso­ci­a­tion For Free Research And Inter­na­tion­al Cooperation
• Inter­na­tion­al Anti­cri­sis Center

As a result of the des­ig­na­tion, all prop­er­ty and inter­ests in prop­er­ty of these tar­gets that are sub­ject to US juris­dic­tion are blocked, and US per­sons are gen­er­al­ly pro­hib­it­ed from engag­ing in trans­ac­tions with them.

Recent Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report report­ing on Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion includes:

• In April, we pub­lished an exclu­sive GIOR inves­ti­ga­tion uncov­er­ing how West­ern for­mer diplo­mats and jour­nal­ists are con­tribut­ing to the Strate­gic Cul­ture Foun­da­tion despite its links to Russ­ian intelligence.

• In March, we report­ed about a Berlin con­fer­ence orga­nized by Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tives linked to the Asso­ci­a­tion For Free Research And Inter­na­tion­al Coop­er­a­tion (AFRIC).

• In March, we report­ed about the 24 Group, a net­work of auto­mat­ed web­sites spread­ing pro-Russ­ian disinformation.