The U.S. Treasury Department has released "Kremlin report" - the list of Russians who are potential targets for future U.S. sanctions. The list has the names of 114 senior politicians and members of the Russian leadership, as well as 96 names of the so-called Russian oligarchs.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, Deputy Prime Ministers Sergey Prikhodko, Alexander Khloponin, Vitaly Mutko, Arkady Dvorkovich, Olga Golodets, Dmitry Kozak and Dmitry Rogozin, and other 22 ministers, including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu have been put on the list.
The list also includes Presidential Administration Chief Anton Vaino, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov, and other senior members of the presidential administration, and also Kremlin aides, presidential advisers and plenipotentiary representatives to the federal districts.
Other senior political leaders on the list are Federation Council Valentina Matviyenko, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, General Staff Chief Valery Gerasimov, Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika, and head of the Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin.
Mikhail Fedotov, who heads the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights, Russian business ombudsman Boris Titov and presidential commissioner for children’s rights Anna Kuznetsova are also mentioned in the "Kremlin report."
The document also has the names of the heads of major state corporations, including Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, Sberbank CEO German Gref, Russian Railways Director General Oleg Belozerov and others.
In addition, the US Department of the Treasury has put 96 names on the list of the so-called Russian oligarchs: businessmen Alisher Usmanov, Roman Abramovich, Suleiman Kerimov and also Kaspersky Lab founder Eugene Kaspersky, Pyotr Aven and Vladimir Potanin. The list also includes Arkady and Boris Rotenberg, Gennady Timchenko and Oleg Tinkov.
The Treasury Department stressed that this is not a sanctions list. The inclusion of these individuals on the list does not create any obstacles for business contacts of US citizens provided that they are not subject to sanctions, TASS reported.
The document reads that the individuals mentioned on the "oligarchs list" "have a net worth of $ 1 billion or more".
The director of the Institute of Political Studies Sergei Markov, speaking with Vestnik Kavkaza, noted that the 'Kremlin report' aims at turning Russian power elites against President Vladimir Putin and make them cause regime change. "This is a transition to a new phase of the one-sided hybrid war waging by the US against Russia, while the Russian leadership has been trying to reconcile with the West. All people put on the list will be forced to withdraw their capital from the West, take their children back. The US is urging its allies to take certain measures against them, this is a kind of outlawing, encouraging any negative and aggressive actions, prohibiting contacts and negotiations," he explained.
"They say in the United States all the time that Russia is toxic, and now they published a list of Russian officials recognized as" toxic", which are recommended to be perceived as part of a disease. The 'Kremlin report' is a list for destruction,and the official recognition that four years of encouraging the elite to overthrow Vladimir Putin failed. The United States strongly advised the elites how to do this, but Putin remained in power, and now officials and business were punished. In this regard, the 'Kremlin report' is also a recognition of Washington's weakness, whose mechanisms did not work in Russia," Sergei Markov underlined.
The director of the Center for Political Information, Alexei Mukhin, in turn, is confident that the 'Kremlin report' will not affect the Russia-US relations. "It means already nothing, since our relations have been destroyed to the ground," he said, adding that the de jure introduction of sanctions against officials at the level of prime minister and chairman of the Federation Council is highly doubtful.
"I hope that the Congress understands that the sanctions against Dmitry Medvedev and Valentina Matviyenko will mean de facto the declaration of war, although I have doubts about it. As for the purpose of the report, it aims at providing direct pressure and interfering in the internal affairs of the sovereign state of Russia on the eve of the presidential elections. Shame on Washington. I think a legal assessment of this interference will be given at the international level," Alexei Mukhin expects.
According to the senior research fellow at the European Research Centre of the International Relations Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Vladimir Olenchenko, Washington's approach is arrogant and unprofessional at the same time. "I do not understand what the Americans are expecting, that Russia will be upset and start asking "Why? One should expect from Moscow only similar actions in view of this 'Kremlin report' in the future work," the expert predicts.
"First, all other countries should understand that the approach of drawing up lists of objectionable persons can be applied to them as well. Second, by creating such tension in relations with Russia, they take on an increased responsibility, since a lot of things in the world depend on the Russian-US relations, which means that now we are experiencing a period of power crisis in the US administration. They are not able to talk on an equal footing, they are not able to integrate into the system of a multipolar world, so they try to emphasize that they are leaders, despite the fact that their share in both the economy and politics is steadily declining," Vladimir Olenchenko concluded.
