The United States imposed sanctions on three Russians and a Ukrainian due to interference in American elections and cyber attacks. This was reported on the website of the US Treasury.
The black list includes Russian citizens Anton Andreev, Daria Aslanova and Artem Lifshits, who are allegedly connected with the Internet Research Agency, which manipulated the elections. The Americans attribute it to businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin. The US Treasury notes that Russia is using the services of a number of people to “try to sow discord between political parties and cause internal divisions” in democracies.
The new restrictions also hit the deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Andriy Derkach, who previously published recordings of conversations, presumably with the participation of former US Vice President Joe Biden and the fifth President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko.
From May to July 2020, Derkach demonstrated audio recordings of conversations between Poroshenko and Biden. At them, the former US vice president, in particular, offered a billion dollars for the resignation of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was investigating the activities of the oil and gas company Burisma. A case was initiated on treason and illegal use of “special technical means of obtaining information.”
In April 2019, US Special Attorney Robert Mueller published a report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, which was won by Donald Trump. It says that Moscow did interfere in the American electoral process, but suspicions about the connection between the Russian side and Trump could not be confirmed. Later, a federal court in Washington ruled that the connection of the “troll factory” with the Kremlin was also not proven.
