President-elect Donald Trump agreed to meet with intelligence leaders in the wake of Obama administration sanctions against Russia for its alleged hacking during the recent election.
“It’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things,” Trump said in a written response released four hours after the announcement. “Nevertheless, in the interest of our country and its great people, I will meet with leaders of the intelligence community next week in order to be updated on the facts of this situation.”
In the wake of suspected attempts to influence the American presidential election, the Obama administration announced an executive order that sanctions two of Russia’s intelligence agencies—the GRU and the FSB—as well as other associates of the GRU.
According to the cybersecurity firm contracted by the Democratic National Committee has traced the e-mail hacking to the Fancy Bear group, an affiliate of the GRU.
The State Department has also declared 35 Russian intelligence operatives “persona non grata” and given them 72 hours to leave the U.S. It has also shut down two Russian compounds in Maryland and New York. The two properties were purchased by the Soviet government in 1972 and 1954, respectively.
A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin—Dimitry Peskov—spoke to reporters in Moscow:
“We think that such steps by a U.S. administration that has three weeks left to work are aimed at two things: to further harm Russian-American ties, which are at a low point as it is, as well as, obviously, to deal a blow to the foreign policy plans of the incoming administration of the president-elect.”
The Treasury Secretary has revealed two suspects said to be involved in the “malicious cyber-enabled activities”—Evgeniy Mikhailovich Bogachev and Aleksey Alekseyevich Belan.
“These actions follow repeated private and public warnings that we have issued to the Russian government, and are a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm U.S. interests in violation of established international norms of behavior,” President Obama said in a statement.
U.S. intelligence has concluded that Russia influenced the election in favor of President-elect Donald Trump, who has rejected the claims.
The Obama administration is continuing to “identify, detect and Russia’s global campaign of malicious cyber activities.”
