Tag Archives: Moscow

Russia: our response to U.S. sanctions will be precise and painful

FILE PHOTO: A view shows a tower of the Kremlin (R) and the Foreign Ministry headquarters (back) in Moscow, Russia March 16, 2018. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov/File Photo

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Valentina Matvienko, the speaker of the Russian upper house of parliament, said on Wednesday that Moscow’s response to U.S. sanctions will be targeted and painful, Russian news agencies reported.

The United States this month added several Russian firms and officials to a sanctions blacklist in response to what it said were the Kremlin’s “malign activities”. Moscow says those sanctions are unlawful and has warned that it will retaliate.

“No one should be under any illusions,” Matvienko, who is closely aligned with the Kremlin, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

“Russia’s response to the sanctions, our so-called counter-sanctions, will be precise, painful, and without question sensitive for exactly those countries that imposed them (the sanctions) on Russia,” she was quoted as saying.

“Sanctions are a double-edged sword and those who impose them should understand that sanctions against countries, especially those like Russia, will carry with them risks of serious consequences for those who impose them.”

Lawmakers in the lower house of the Russian parliament have drawn up legislation that would give the government powers to ban or restrict imports of U.S. goods and services ranging from medicines to software and rocket engines. However, the Kremlin has not yet said if it backs such measures.

A senior U.S. administration official said on Monday President Donald Trump has delayed imposing additional sanctions on Russia and is unlikely to approve them unless Moscow carries out a new cyber attack or some other provocation.

(Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Catherine Evans)

Russia spied on Skripal and daughter for at least 5 years: UK

Salisbury District Hospital is seen after Yulia Skripal was discharged, in Salisbury, Britain, April 10, 2018. REUTERS/Peter Nicho

LONDON (Reuters) – Russia’s intelligence agencies spied on former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia for at least five years before they were attacked with a nerve agent in March, the national security adviser to Britain’s prime minister said.

Mark Sedwill said in a letter to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday that email accounts of Yulia had been targeted in 2013 by cyber specialists from Russia’s GRU military intelligence service.

Sedwill also said in the letter, which was published by the government, that it was “highly likely that the Russian intelligence services view at least some of its defectors as legitimate targets for assassination.”

The Skripals were targeted by what London says was a nerve agent attack that left both of them critically ill for weeks. British Prime Minister Theresa May has said it is highly likely that Moscow was behind the attack.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted on Friday that a report this week by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) did not confirm the origin of the poison used against the Skripals.

Lavrov said the report only confirmed the composition of the substance and that Britain’s claim that it confirmed the UK position on the Skripal case was overstated.

Separately on Friday, Russia’s ambassador to Britain said he was concerned the British government was trying to get rid of evidence related to the case.

“We get the impression that the British government is deliberately pursuing the policy of destroying all possible evidence, classifying all remaining materials and making an independent and transparent investigation impossible,” Alexander Yakovenko told reporters.

He also said Russia could not be sure about the authenticity of a statement issued by Yulia Skripal on Wednesday in which she declined the offer of help from the Russian embassy.

(Reporting by Kate Holton; Writing by William Schomberg and Elisabeth O’Leary; Editing by Stephen Addison)

Skripals poisoned with nerve agent, chemical arms watchdog confirms

FILE PHOTO: Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) arrive to begin work at the scene of the nerve agent attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, in Salisbury, Britain, March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls/File Photo

By Anthony Deutsch and Guy Faulconbridge

THE HAGUE/LONDON (Reuters) – The lethal poison that struck down a former Russian spy and his daughter last month in England was a highly pure type of Novichok nerve agent, the global chemical weapons watchdog concluded on Thursday, backing Britain’s findings.

Sergei Skripal, a former colonel in Russian military intelligence who betrayed dozens of agents to Britain’s MI6 foreign spy service, and his daughter were found unconscious on a bench in the English cathedral city of Salisbury on March 4.

Britain blamed Russia for the poisoning and Prime Minister Theresa May said that the Skripals had been attacked with a military-grade nerve agent from the Novichok group of poisons, developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 80s.

Moscow denied any involvement and suggested Britain had carried out the attack to stoke anti-Russian hysteria, but Britain asked the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to check samples from Salisbury.

Testing by four laboratories affiliated with the global chemical weapons watchdog confirmed Britain’s findings and showed that the toxic chemical was “of high purity.”

The chemical weapons watchdog did not explicitly name Novichok in its published summary, say where the poison may have come from or assign blame for the attack. But it did confirm Britain’s analysis about the substance that had been used.

“The results of analysis by OPCW-designated laboratories of environmental and biomedical samples collected by the OPCW team confirm the findings of the United Kingdom relating to the identity of the toxic chemical,” the published summary said.

Testing by OPCW laboratories, the details of which were kept confidential, also found the substance used in Salisbury to be of “a high purity”, which supports the British government’s assertion that a state was involved.

The attack prompted the biggest Western expulsion of Russian diplomats since the Cold War as allies in Europe and the United States sided with May’s view that Moscow was either responsible or had lost control of the nerve agent.

Moscow has hit back by expelling Western diplomats, questioning how Britain knows that Russia was responsible and offering its rival interpretations, including that it amounted to a plot by British secret services.

NOVICHOK ATTACK

Russia has said it does not have such nerve agents and President Vladimir Putin said it was nonsense to think that Moscow would have poisoned Skripal and his daughter. A British police officer was also taken ill after attending the scene.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson hailed the chemical watchdog’s findings.

“There can be no doubt what was used and there remains no alternative explanation about who was responsible – only Russia has the means, motive and record,” Johnson said.

The poisoning of Skripal, a former double agent who settled in Britain in 2010 after being released by Moscow in a spy swap, shows “how reckless Russia is prepared to be”, the head of Britain’s GCHQ spy agency said on Thursday.

Yulia Skripal, who was released from hospital on Monday, said in a statement she was suffering from the effects of the poisoning, while her father remained seriously ill. She said she was declining an offer of assistance from the Russian Embassy. [L8N1RO6G7]

There are several variants of Novichok, a binary weapon containing two less-toxic chemicals that, when mixed, react to produce a poison several times more lethal than sarin or VX.

Russia’s ambassador to Britain, Alexander Yakovenko, has identified the alleged poison as Novichok A-234, derived from an earlier version known as A-232.

Britain has said the use of such an obscure poison indicates Moscow was either to blame or had lost control over its nerve agents.

“The high purity of the substance will strengthen the UK’s position that the agent was made by a highly proficient team and in a well refined process,” said Alastair Hay, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Toxicology at Britain’s University of Leeds.

The laboratory results, which came in on Wednesday night, were to be circulated to OPCW member states on Thursday. The results will be debated at an emergency OPCW session next Wednesday, to be convened at Britain’s request.

It is unclear how the OPCW will respond. Its executive council has been unable to take decisions due to splits between the Western powers and Russia that have also prevented it from acting in the wake of ongoing use of chemical weapons in Syria.

(Additional reporting by Michael Holden; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Daughter of poisoned Russian spy declines embassy help: statement

An undated photograph shows Yulia Skripal, daughter of former Russian Spy Sergei Skripal, taken from Yulia Skripal's Facebook account in London, Britain, April 6, 2018. Yulia Skripal/Facebook via REUTERS

LONDON (Reuters) – Yulia Skripal, who was poisoned in Britain last month along with her father, a former Russian spy, said on Wednesday she did not wish to take up the offer of services from the Russian Embassy in London.

In a statement issued on her behalf by British police, Skripal said her father, Sergei, remained seriously ill and she was still suffering from the effects of nerve gas used against them in an attack that led to one of the biggest crises in Britain’s relations with Moscow since the Cold War.

“I have access to friends and family, and I have been made aware of my specific contacts at the Russian Embassy who have kindly offered me their assistance in any way they can,” Yulia Skripal said.

“At the moment I do not wish to avail myself of their services, but, if I change my mind I know how to contact them.”

The Russian Embassy in London has previously said it had not been granted consular access to the 33 year-old woman.

Following Yulia Skripal’s statement, the embassy said: “We continue to insist on a meeting with Yulia and Sergei Skripal. The situation around them looks more and more like a forceful detention or imprisonment.”

Yulia Skripal was discharged from a hospital in the English city of Salisbury on Monday, where, she said, she was treated ” with obvious clinical expertise and with such kindness”.

Skripal said she was not yet strong enough to give a media interview and she said comments made by her cousin to Russian media were not her’s nor those of her father.

“I thank my cousin Viktoria for her concern for us, but ask that she does not visit me or try to contact me for the time being,” the statement quoted her as saying.

The Skripals were in a critical condition for weeks after the March 4 attack before their health improved.

Sergei Skripal, who was recruited by Britain’s MI6, was arrested for treason in Moscow in 2004. He ended up in Britain after being swapped in 2010 for Russian spies caught in the United States.

Britain accused Russia of being behind the nerve agent attack and Western governments including the United States expelled more than 100 Russian diplomats. Russia has denied any involvement in the poisoning and retaliated in kind.

(Writing by William Schomberg; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

‘Russia in the doldrums?’: new U.S. sanctions to weigh on recovery

By Jack Stubbs and Polina Nikolskaya

MOSCOW (Reuters) – An escalation in U.S. sanctions against Moscow risks derailing a fragile recovery in Russia’s economy, which had just begun to take hold after the Kremlin’s last confrontation with the West in 2014, analysts and investors said on Monday.

The United States imposed major new sanctions against Russia on Friday, striking at senior Russian officials and some of the country’s biggest companies in one of Washington’s most aggressive moves to punish Moscow for its alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election and other “malign activity”.

“One gets the impression that since 2014 we have been convinced that sanctions are painless for our economy,” said Kirill Tremasov, head of research at Loko-Invest and former director of the Russian Economy Ministry’s forecasting department.

“This is completely groundless. What happened on Friday opens a new stage in relations with Western countries. We have found ourselves in a new reality. And it is very, very serious.”

Analysts and investors in Moscow said the sanctions could consign Russia to years of low growth, frustrating government efforts to stimulate a rebound from a two-year downturn brought on by low oil prices and Western sanctions over Moscow’s role in the Ukraine crisis.

Putin was re-elected for his fourth presidential term in March with a huge majority, but is under increasing pressure to meet voters’ expectations of better growth and assuage concerns about falling living standards.

SLOW-GROWTH ENVIRONMENT

After two years of contraction, Russian GDP returned to growth of 1.5 percent last year on the back of higher oil prices, still short of a government target of 2 percent.

Chris Weafer, a senior partner at economic and political consultancy Macro Advisory, said he still saw Russia’s economy growing by 1.8 percent this year, with oil prices above $60 a barrel.

“But the big question, of course, is ‘How long does Russia stay in this low-growth environment?’ That’s where the impact of sanctions happens,” he said.

“We all know that the economy needs to grow at a faster pace over the course of the next (presidential) term, it needs to get stronger – and sanctions and the impact on foreign direct investment, that’s where it comes in,” he said. “2018 is the year of Russia in the doldrums.”

The latest round of U.S. sanctions represents the biggest escalation in Western action against Russia since Washington and the European Union first targeted oligarchs close to Putin and their businesses over the Ukraine crisis in 2014.

Investors said the inclusion of people who are not traditionally seen as part of Putin’s inner circle showed that any Russian company or business leader could now be targeted.

Russia’s rouble suffered its biggest daily fall in over three years on Monday and stocks in major Russian companies also slid, as investors reacted to the new sanctions. State-owned Sberbank, often seen as a barometer of the wider economy, fell 17 percent in Moscow and aluminum giant Rusal <0486.HK> lost over half its value in Hong Kong after its main owner Oleg Deripaska was named on the sanctions list.

TIGHTER MONEY

The increased uncertainty and risk will make it harder for Russian companies to borrow abroad and reduce the amount of inward investment, said Tim Ash at BlueBay Asset Management.

“Unless there is a move to de-escalation, you have to assume that financing conditions around Russia will get even tighter,” he said. “Long-term, that’s going to be bad for growth and mean even more stagnation in the Russian economy.”

Natalia Orlova, head economist at Alfa Bank, said the central bank might now take more time over interest rate cuts that could boost growth: “Based on economic logic … it seems to me that it is dangerous to hurry with a rate cut in such uncertain conditions.”

Loko-Invest’s Kirill Tremasov said the biggest danger of the new sanctions might be in scaring foreign investors off Russian OFZ treasury bonds, popular in the West because of their high yields.

The yield on the benchmark 10-year OFZ rose as high as 7.32 percent on Monday as the price of the bond fell. It had stood at around 7.05 percent last week.

Foreigners’ holdings of OFZ bonds stood at nearly $40 billion, or 33.9 percent of all OFZ bonds as of Feb. 1, the last period for which data was available.

“For foreign investors, this is a very, very serious signal … and now there could be some OFZ outflows,” Tremasov said. “This will be reflected in the growth of interest rates in the economy.”

(Additional reporting by Andrey Ostroukh; Writing by Jack Stubbs; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

Russia says it will respond in kind to West’s expulsions

A general view shows the U.S. embassy in Moscow, Russia March 27, 2018. REUTERS/Tatyana M

By Christian Lowe and Katya Golubkova

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia said on Wednesday it would respond in kind to the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats by the West over the poisoning of former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in the English city of Salisbury.

What began as a row between London and Moscow after Britain accused Russia of using a nerve agent to poison Skripal and his daughter has now snowballed into an international chorus of rebuke for the Kremlin, with even some friendly governments ejecting Russian diplomats.

Adding to the list on Wednesday, Slovakia, Malta and Luxembourg each recalled their ambassador in Moscow for consultations, while Montenegro said it would expel a Russian diplomat. Slovakia and Montenegro, while both members of the U.S.-led NATO alliance, are traditionally close to Russia.

The biggest demarche came from the United States, which on Monday said it was expelling 60 Russian diplomats. That dented Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hopes of forging a friendly relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Valentina Matviyenko, a Kremlin loyalist and speaker of the upper house of parliament, said Russia would retaliate.

“Without a doubt, Russia, as is diplomatic practice, will respond symmetrically and observe parity when it comes to the number of diplomats,” RIA news agency quoted her as saying.

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu said a Russian military aircraft had, for the first time since the Cold War, conducted a training flight via the North Pole to North America, RIA news agency reported.

There was no immediate indication that the flight was linked to Russia’s standoff with the West. The U.S. navy is holding a five-week training exercise in the Arctic Circle.

COLD WAR ECHOES

In total, more than 100 Russian diplomats are to be sent home from states ranging from Denmark to Australia, the biggest Western expulsion of Russian diplomats since the height of the Cold War.

Moscow has denied being behind the attack on the Skripals and says its adversaries are using it to whip up a campaign of “Russophobia.”

Skripal, 66, a double agent who was swapped in a spy exchange deal in 2010 and went to live in England, and Yulia Skripal, 33, were found unconscious on a public bench in a shopping center in Salisbury on March 4. They remain critically ill in hospital from the attack in which, British authorities say, a Soviet-era nerve toxin called Novichok was used.

Russia has already expelled 23 British diplomats, a tit-for-tat response to Britain’s expulsion of the same number of staff at the Russian embassy in London.

Adding to a drum beat of tough rhetoric coming from Moscow and London, the Russian foreign ministry raised the prospect British intelligence services had poisoned Skripal and his daughter.

“If convincing evidence to the contrary is not presented to the Russian side we will consider that we are dealing with an attempt on the lives of our citizens,” the ministry said in a statement.

In Australia, whose government said on Tuesday it would expel two diplomats, the Russian ambassador, Grigory Loginov, told reporters the world will enter into a “Cold War situation” if the West persists with its bias against Russia.

Two days after the United States announced the expulsion of Russian diplomats, there was still no sign of how exactly Russian planned to respond – an indication, perhaps, that the scale of the Western action caught Moscow off guard.

Interfax news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying Moscow would assess the level of hostility in Washington and London before deciding how to retaliate.

(Additional reporting by Reuters bureaux; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Britain seeks European help against Russian spy networks: diplomats

Inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) arrive to begin work at the scene of the nerve agent attack on former Russian agent Sergei Skripal, in Salisbury, Britain March 21, 2018. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

By Gabriela Baczynska and Robin Emmott

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Britain is seeking help from other European countries to take action against Russian spy networks that could be preparing similar attacks as the nerve agent assault on a former Russian spy in England, diplomats said.

Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May will urge “coordinated action” among European Union governments at a summit in Brussels on Thursday, where she will also try to persuade the bloc’s leaders to condemn Russia squarely over the attack in Salisbury.

May accused Russia of the first known offensive use of a nerve toxin in Europe since World War Two after Sergei Skripal, a former Russian double agent, and his daughter were found unconscious on a public bench in the English city on March 4.

In the worst crisis between the two powers since the Cold War, May has expelled 23 Russian diplomats whom she says were spies working under cover. Moscow, which has denied involvement in the attack, has taken retaliatory steps.

“Britain says there are these networks that organize such things like Salisbury, that these networks exist across our borders and that it would be good to go after them together,” a senior EU diplomat said.

“They have already been approaching EU states on that bilaterally and today May will tell EU leaders more.”

Diplomats stressed May was not seeking a formal or immediate EU strategy because the bloc has little joint competence on intelligence, meaning any such work would be done directly with other governments.

“There is movement among several willing states to do something together in reaction to Skripal,” said another EU diplomat. This could be done bilaterally outside the EU so as not to press too hard on those bloc members worried about their ties with Moscow, the person said.

Reluctance from countries – Greece and Hungary among them – mean a draft joint statement by EU leaders now says only that they take “extremely seriously” London’s assessment that it was highly likely Russia was responsible for the attack.

But May will push fellow EU leaders to blame Moscow directly for the poisoning of the Skripals who British authorities say have been critically ill since the attack by a Soviet-produced military-grade nerve agent called Novichok.

A British official confirmed London was seeking to work with groups of countries on intelligence sharing over spy networks.

“Russia has shown itself as a strategic enemy, not a strategic partner,” said another British official, who stressed however that Britain was not seeking new economic sanctions.

May will seek to demonstrate to EU governments that all Western countries are vulnerable to such attacks, as well as what NATO says is a Russian strategy to undermine the West, officials said.

“The Russia threat does not respect borders and as such we are all at risk,” a second senior British official said.

PROOF

May will need to overcome reluctance from the Russia doves in the EU since the bloc is traditionally split on how to deal with Moscow.

Ties between Moscow and the West plummeted over Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea from Kiev and support for rebels in east Ukraine, which have triggered sanctions by the EU.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday the Salisbury attack could not go without response.

Macron and May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. President Donald Trump, have already said in a joint statement they “share” Britain’s assessment of Russian responsibility.

Diplomats said EU leaders could to settle for similar language, though some bloc members remained concerned there was not enough direct proof to incriminate Russia in the attack.

European Council President Donald Tusk, who will chair the summit and has sided with Britain, said: “It is clear we should improve our preparedness for future attacks.”

He wants the bloc to discuss how to better protect itself from chemical and biological attacks, including in cooperation with NATO, as well as to how to beef up counter-intelligence capabilities to combat hybrid threats.

(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Piper, Richard Lough, Jean-Baptiste Vey, Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Three buses leave Russian embassy in London as expelled diplomats head to Moscow

Embassy staff react as colleagues and children board buses outside Russia's Embassy in London, Britain,

ONDON (Reuters) – Three buses with diplomatic number plates left the Russian embassy in London on Tuesday as 23 diplomats who were expelled by Prime Minister Theresa May over a military-grade nerve toxin attack headed back to Moscow.

Russian embassy workers waved to the leaving diplomats and their families as the buses pulled away, a Reuters photographer at the scene said.

Last Wednesday, after the first known offensive use of such a nerve agent on European soil since World War Two, May gave 23 Russians she said were spies working under diplomatic cover at the embassy a week to leave.

(Reporting by Toby Melville, editing by Guy Faulconbridge)

Soviet-era scientist says he helped create poison in UK spy attack row

ILE PHOTO: Sergei Skripal, a former colonel of Russia's GRU military intelligence service, looks on inside the defendants' cage as he attends a hearing at the Moscow military district court, Russia August 9, 2006. Kommersant/Yuri Sen

By Andrew Osborn

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Cold War-era scientist acknowledged on Tuesday he had helped create the nerve agent that Britain says was used to poison an ex-spy and his daughter, contradicting Moscow’s insistence that neither Russia nor the Soviet Union ever had such a program.

However, Professor Leonid Rink told the RIA news agency that the attack did not look like Moscow’s work because Sergei and Yulia Skripal had not died immediately.

The Skripals remain alive but in critical condition more than two weeks after they were found unconscious in the English cathedral town of Salisbury. A policeman who helped them is also in hospital in a serious condition.

Rink said he worked under the Soviet Union at a chemical weapons facility where the Novichok military-grade nerve agent was developed. Asked if he was one of Novichok’s creators, he told RIA: “Yes. It was the basis for my doctoral dissertation.”

Moscow has denied any involvement in the Skripals’ case or that the Soviet Union or its successor state Russia developed Novichok at all.

Echoing a theory floated in Russian state media, Rink said the British could have been behind the attack.

“It’s hard to believe that the Russians were involved, given that all of those caught up in the incident are still alive,” he said. “Such outrageous incompetence by the alleged (Russian) spies would have simply been laughable and unacceptable.”

Inspectors from the world’s chemical weapons watchdog have begun examining the poison used in the attack which London blames on Moscow.

Rink told RIA he had worked at a Soviet chemicals weapons research facility in the town of Shikhany in Russia’s Saratov Region for 27 years until the early 1990s. Novichok was not a single substance, he said, but a system of using chemical weapons and had been called ‘Novichok-5’ by the Soviet Union.

“A big group of specialists in Shikhany and in Moscow worked on Novichok – on the technologies, toxicologies and biochemistry,” he said. “In the end we achieved very good results.”

Rink confessed to having secretly supplied a military-grade poison for cash that was used to murder a Russian banking magnate and his secretary in 1995. In a statement to investigators after his arrest, viewed by Reuters, Rink said he was in possession of poisons created as part of the chemical weapons program which he stored in his garage.

Rink received a one-year suspended prison sentence for “misuse of powers” after a secret trial, according to a lawyer involved in the case.

‘HEIGHT OF IDIOCY’

Rink told RIA it would have been absurd for Russian spies to have used Novichok to try to kill the Skripals because of its obviously Russian origin and Russian name.

“There are lots of more suitable substances,” he said. “To fire the equivalent of a powerful rocket at someone who is not a threat and to miss would be the height of idiocy.”

He dismissed British media reports that Yulia Skripal could have unwittingly carried Novichok from Moscow as “utter nonsense”, saying Novichok would not have survived the journey.

Once secret, Rink said the technology behind Novichok was now known to many countries including Britain, the United States and China, who he said were capable of manufacturing a version of Novichok.

However, he said the exact formula devised by the Soviet Union was unique and that it should be possible, based on a sample of the toxin used in the Salisbury attack, to say it was not “cooked up” in Russia.

Another Russian scientist called Vil Mirzayanov had done a lot to publicize the formulas used to produce Novichok, Rink said.

Mirzayanov, who now lives in the United States, told Reuters this month that only the Russian government could have carried out the attack.

Rink said he knew of “about five” scientists familiar with the Novichok technology who had left Russia in the 1990s.

“Permission to let them leave generated great surprise in our institute,” Rink told RIA.

(Corrects in third para to “two weeks” from “three weeks”.)

(Editing by David Stamp)

U.S. hints at shift on Russia with sanctions and condemnation

National flags of Russia and the U.S. fly at Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow, Russia April 11, 2017. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov

By Arshad Mohammed and John Walcott

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – By imposing new sanctions on Russia and condemning a suspected Russian chemical attack in Britain, Washington has hinted at a tougher stance toward Moscow despite President Donald Trump’s stated desire for better ties.

The U.S. Treasury slapped sanctions on 19 Russian citizens and five entities for election meddling and cyber attacks in the most significant steps the United States has taken against Russia since Trump took office amid U.S. intelligence agency allegations that Moscow tried to help him win the 2016 election.

While the Treasury put off targeting oligarchs and officials close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, it said further sanctions were coming and for the first time blamed Moscow for cyber attacks stretching back at least two years that targeted the U.S. power grid, including nuclear facilities.

After initially equivocating about a chemical attack on a former Russian double agent in Salisbury, England, the White House joined a statement by the leaders of Britain, France and Germany in which they said they “abhor the attack” and blamed it on Moscow.

Moscow has denied any involvement in the poisoning.

Thursday’s actions have caused some Russia analysts to ask whether the administration is taking a more confrontational stance despite Trump’s repeated statements in the election campaign that he wanted a better relationship with Moscow, his praise for Putin and apparent reluctance to criticize the Russian leader.

“I think we have hit an inflection point in the current administration’s approach towards Russia,” said a diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity. “There has been a shift in balance.”

The diplomat attributed the evolution partly to a clash between U.S.-backed and Russian-backed forces in the Syrian city of Deir al-Zor in February; Russia pounding Syria’s eastern Ghouta enclave of anti-government rebels with air strikes during the past month; and Putin showing a video on March 1 of a weapon appearing to hover over what looked like a map of Florida, home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

“Those three things, taken together, have caused a shift in analysis in parts … of the administration,” said the diplomat.

TRUMP EXASPERATED

While there was a sense at the White House that there has been a hardening of Trump’s view toward Russia, at least for now, it was unclear whether this represented a long-term shift.

A senior administration official said there was some feeling that the goodwill that Trump extended toward Russia when he took over has not been reciprocated and that the Russians do not want to have good relations with the United States.

This has exasperated Trump, who instructed his team to make sure the United States appeared to be in solidarity with Britain over the nerve agent attack.

Eugene Rumer, a former U.S. national intelligence officer for Russia, suggested Trump’s approach may ultimately be guided by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Russia meddled in the election campaign.

The Kremlin denies interfering. Mueller is also investigating any potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow officials, something Trump denies.

“My hypothesis is … the White House stance on Russia is going to be determined to a large extent by how much they think the investigation threatens their political position,” Rumer said.

Officials from multiple U.S. agencies discussed next steps at a meeting on Thursday, with one aim being to avoid personally attacking Putin and taking in-your-face steps that could prompt retaliation.

In announcing Thursday’s sanctions, U.S. officials made clear more would follow.

“This is just one of a series of ongoing actions that we’re taking to counter Russian aggression,” one U.S. official told reporters. “There will be more to come, and we’re going to continue to employ our resources to combat malicious Russian activity and respond to nefarious attacks.”

Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, were found unconscious on a bench outside a shopping center on March 4 after being exposed to what the British authorities have identified as a military-grade, Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.

Another U.S. official attributed the sharper edge to U.S. policy to increasingly brazen behavior by Russia in cyberspace and on the ground, culminating in the Salisbury attack.

This U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, also pointed to Russia’s refusal to restrain Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the role of Russian “mercenaries” in Syria, now entering its eighth year of civil war.

The official said it was unclear if Trump himself saw Russia as an adversary but suggested Putin may have “overplayed his hand” by leaving Russian fingerprints on the hacking, the chemical attack, the deployment of ground-launched cruise missiles which the U.S. says violate an arms control treaty, and a March 1 speech on “invincible” Russian weaponry.

“If the president felt like Putin was one-upping him, not to mention stealing the limelight, then it wouldn’t be surprising that he would react,” the official said.

While more sanctions are expected, it was not clear if the Trump policy toward Russia was changing, especially given Trump’s unpredictability, said a third official, who is involved in talks on next steps.

“Tomorrow is another day,” the official said.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Warren Strobel; Writing by Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Grant McCool and Paul Tait)