The
sanctions, in which 30 entities are expected to be blacklisted,
will be tied with orders expelling about 10 Russian officials
from the United States, one of the people said.
The United States is also expected to announce aggressive new
measures targeting the country's sovereign debt through
restrictions on U.S. financial institutions' ability to trade
such debt, according to another source.
The White House, the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Treasury
Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The action will add a new chill to the already frosty relations
between Washington and Moscow, which has tested the West's
patience with a military build-up near Ukraine.
The wide-ranging sanctions would come partly in response to a
cybersecurity breach affecting software made by SolarWinds Corp
that the U.S. government has said was likely orchestrated by
Russia. The breach gave hackers access to thousands of companies
and government offices that used the company's products.
Microsoft President Brad Smith described the attack, which was
identified in December, as "the largest and most sophisticated
attack the world has ever seen."
The United States also intends to punish Moscow for alleged
interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. In a report
last month, U.S. intelligence agencies said Russian President
Vladimir Putin likely directed efforts to try to swing the
election to then-President Donald Trump and away from
now-President Joe Biden.
Biden has also vowed to take action on reports that Russia
offered bounties to Taliban militants to kill U.S. troops in
Afghanistan.
The expected moves by the Biden administration are likely to
exacerbate tensions in a relationship that slumped to a new
post-Cold War low last month after Biden said he thought Putin
was a "killer."
In a call on Tuesday, Biden told Putin that the United States
would act "firmly" to defend its interests in response to those
actions, according to U.S. officials' account of the call.
Biden also proposed a meeting with Putin "in a third country"
that could allow the leaders to find areas to work together.
In the past few weeks, Washington and its NATO allies have been
alarmed by a large build-up of Russian troops near Ukraine and
in Crimea, the peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in
2014.
"The hostility and unpredictability of America's actions force
us in general to be prepared for the worst scenarios," Kremlin
spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters last week, anticipating
the new sanctions.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, Humeyra Pamuk and Steve Holland;
Additional reporting by Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Tim Ahmann
and Michael Perry)
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