President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin talk during the APEC Summit in Danang, Vietnam, on Nov. 11. (Jorge Silva/Reuters)
  
The United States imposed new economic sanctions on senior Russian politicians, companies and business leaders Friday, citing a list of complaints including Moscow’s attempts to undermine Western democracies, support of separatists in Ukraine and its backing for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The sanctions — the Trump administration’s most aggressive action against Kremlin-connected individuals — target 17 Russian government officials, a state-owned weapons trading company, and seven so-called oligarchs and 12 companies affiliated with them.
“The Russian government operates for the disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and government elites,” said Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin. “Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government’s destabilizing activities.”
The list of targets includes individuals with close ties to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, including Igor Rotenberg and Kirill Shamalov, both major players in Russia’s energy sector, and Rosoboronexport, a state-owned Russian weapons trading company that has been linked to the Syrian government, Russia’s key ally in the Middle East. In 2013, Shamalov married Putin’s daughter.
[Trump administration hits Russian spies, trolls with sanctions over U.S. election interference, cyberattacks]
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The list also includes Russian aluminum magnate Oleg Deripaska, a billionaire with alleged ties to President Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who is facing money laundering charges, and banker Sergei Gorkov, who was dispatched by Russia in December 2016 to meet Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner at Trump Tower in New York.
Senior administration officials on Friday stressed that the sanctions were not aimed at the Russian people. Instead, they were meant to cripple the finances of those elites who have “disproportionately benefited from the bad decisions made by the Kremlin on their behalf,” according to one of the officials.
The officials declined to elaborate on why Putin himself was not directly targeted by the sanctions, but they emphasized that several in the Russian leader’s inner circle were being sanctioned.
“I think it’s important to see in today’s action, a message. And that message is that actions have consequences,” said another senior administration official, who briefed reporters only on the condition of anonymity. “Today’s announcements are the result of a decision that the Russian government has made and continues to make in choosing a path of confrontation.”
[Kremlin reacts with anger and ridicule to Treasury list of influential Russians]
In recent weeks, President Trump’s top advisers have pushed for tougher actions against the Kremlin after the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain, interference in the 2016 U.S. elections and a cyberattack against Ukraine and other countries last year that was described as the most costly in history.
The sanctions won quick support from Capitol Hill, which has pushed for tough moves against Putin’s inner circle since last year when it passed legislation requiring the Treasury Department to publish a list of Russian oligarchs. Trump grudgingly signed the legislation after it passed with a veto-proof majority.
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Trump: ‘Nobody’s been tougher on Russia than Donald Trump’
“These new sanctions send a clear message to Vladimir Putin that the illegal occupation of Ukraine, support for the Assad regime’s war crimes, efforts to undermine Western democracies, and malicious cyberattacks will continue to result in severe consequences for him and those who empower him,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said. 
But the move is likely to provoke a strong response from the Kremlin, which has expressed increasing exasperation with Washington’s policies under the Trump administration despite hopes that the president would take a softer approach toward Moscow. Last week, the United States expelled 60 Russian spies and diplomats in response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal, the former Russian spy, and his daughter. It was the largest expulsion of Russians in U.S. history. Moscow, in turn, expelled 60 U.S. officials from Russia.
[Russia to expel 60 U.S. diplomats, close St. Petersburg consulate]
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On Friday, Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the foreign relations committee in the upper house of the Russian parliament, told the Interfax news agency that the sanctions are an “unsubstantiated, unfriendly and senseless step.”
Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny, meanwhile, tweeted that he is “looking at the new US sanctions list of Russian officials and oligarchs and thinking back of the day when they had champagne celebrating Trump's victory. I am laughing.”
Amie Ferris-Rotman in Moscow contributed to this report.