U.S. Treasury’s “Kremlin list” mocked as sloppy, meaningless

WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 — The U.S. Treasury Department on Monday
published a long-awaited list of Russian officials and business leaders
eligible for sanctions for alleged meddling in the U.S. presidential
elections.

Experts, however, have questioned the list, saying its content and coverage
has threatened its credibility. The list, aiming at pressuring the Kremlin
to cut off its behavior in Ukraine and Crimea, included 114 senior Russian
officials and 96 oligarchs, each of whom has an estimated net worth of 1
trillion U.S. dollars. It came after U.S. President Donald Trump signed a
legislation in August last year that requires the Treasury Department to
provide a list of names of Russian officials and wealthy oligarchs that
have intimate relations with the Kremlin and a sizeable amount of personal
wealth. Russia has responded strongly as President Vladimir Putin said
later that the list is an unfriendly gesture and would undermine the
nation’s relations with the United States in the long run.

The Forbes confirmed on its website that the billionaires list “is copied”
from the media outlet’s 2017 list of the World’s Billionaires. “The
Treasury Department’s list is an exact replica of the Russians on the 2017
billionaires list,” it noted. “In an emailed statement to Forbes, a
Treasury spokesperson explained that the unclassified report was derived
from open sources, including Forbes and others.” Media organizations also
pointed out the stunning similarity between the Russian officials list and
the officials name list on the English website of the Russian federation
government. The report looks just like a Kremlin phone book copied and
pasted by U.S. secret services, said Konstantin Kosachyov, chairman of the
State Duma international affairs committee. “In it, one finds the chiefs
of all Russian leadership bodies in alphabetical order,” Kosachyov said on
his Facebook page.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul described the list as
meaningless and sloppy. “What classified ‘intel’ was used to compose this
list? I see no evidence of that at all,” he tweeted, lashing out at the
“ridiculously broad and thus meaningless” list. “Listing whole GOR is a
joke,” he added. Dmitri Trenin, Carnegie Moscow Center’s director, said on
twitter that “the power of U.S. sanctions is not in the specifics of
people or companies blacklisted but in a simple message: those who want to
do deals with Russians might have to deal with the United States. The
recent Kremlin list underlines that message.” “Russians are not to be
deterred by U.S. sanctions. They are designed to deter non-Russians from
dealing with Russia,” he added. Despite the U.S. statement on Tuesday that
Washington has persuaded multiple nations not to do business with Russia to
avoid being sanctioned by the United States, Trenin argued that “U.S.
blacklists like U.S. sanctions work to make most Russians – elites as well
as the public – feel that they are together in this standoff with the
United States.” – XINHUA