Russian hackingTrump loosens sanctions on Russian intelligence agency which helped his 2016 campaign

The Trump administration has loosened sanctions imposed by Barack Obama on Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), one of the two Russian government intelligence agencies which actively interfered in the U.S. 2016 presidential campaign in order to help Trump win.

The loosening of the sanctions would make it easier for American companies to do business with the FSB, which is the successor of the KGB.

A notice posted on the Treasury Department Web site said that sanctions imposed by Obama — first in 2015, and which were then tightened late last year after Russian hacking campaign on behalf of Trump became public — had been eased. 

“All transactions and activities otherwise prohibited pursuant to Executive Order 13694…as amended by EO 13757, are authorized,” says the notice.

CBS News reports that the amendments, announced by the Treasury in December 2016, blocked four additional Russian intelligence agents and five entities – including the FSB – from obtaining property for use in cyberattacks against the United States.  

The December 2016 order gave the Treasury the authority to determining “that circumstances no longer warrant the blocking of the property and interests in property of a person.”

Russia’s Tass News Agency said: “U.S. authorities have weakened the sanctions regime against the Federal Security Service of Russia (FSB).”

Tass said that President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, did not immediately have a comment on the development. “First we need to understand what is at stake,” it quoted him as saying.

The FSB was the only Russian intelligence agency named in the in the Treasury’s Thursday announcement, leaving much of the emergency action taken by Obama in December intact.

The GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency, which was the other Russian government agency active in the effort to help Trump win the November election, did not see the sanctions Obama imposed on it lifted.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer denied that the amendment was related to Trump’s promise to lift the broader sanctions imposed on Russia in 2014, after it had annexed Crimea.

Trump has said that he was willing to lift the sanctions in exchange for a nuclear arms reduction agreement. 

Obama criticized the idea, saying that the sanctions should remain attached to the reason they were imposed in the first place. 

“The reason we oppose the recall was not because of nuclear issues. It was because the independence and sovereignty of a country, Ukraine, had been encroached upon by force by Russia,” Obama said.

“I think it will probably best serve not only American interests but also the interests of preserving international norms,” he added, “if we made sure that we don’t confuse why these sanctions have been imposed with a whole set of other issues.”