Kremlin Says US Turns Russian Elite into a List of 'Enemies'

MOSCOW — In the latest salvo between Moscow and Washington, the United States Treasury included almost the entire roster of senior Russian government officials as well as 96 billionaires on a new list meant to detail Russia’s most influential people.

The list of 210 people was released just before midnight Monday in accordance with a sanctions-related law that passed the United States Congress last August. Those on the new list were not sanctioned, however.

On the contrary, the Trump administration refrained from imposing any fresh sanctions, angering President Trump’s political opponents in the United States, who said it showed his unwillingness to confront Russia over election meddling and other hostile actions.

President Vladimir V. Putin, while calling the list a slap against all Russians, said Tuesday that his country would not react immediately to the roster, which his spokesman described as a new American “enemies list” that could harm many reputations.

“This is definitely an unfriendly act,” Mr. Putin said when asked about the list during a campaign event for the March 2018 presidential election. “It is complicating Russian-American relations, where the situation is already hard, and is definitely harming international relations in general.”

Mr. Putin said that Moscow had pondered virtually breaking ties with Washington over what is known in Russia as the “Kremlin report,” but decided against it.

“We were prepared to undertake retaliatory steps, and quite serious ones, too, which would cut our relations to zero,” he said. “But we will refrain from such steps for the time being.”

The document itself said being included did not mean being involved in “malign activities.” The list has a long, complicated title that included a numerical reference to the section of the law which had required its publication.

Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, said the report could damage the reputation of people, companies and organizations, not least by suggesting that everyone on it was an enemy of the United States.

“The fact that this list was made public can potentially do damage to the image and reputation of our enterprises, businessmen, politicians and officials,” he told reporters, calling the roster “unprecedented.”

“De facto everyone is called the enemy of the United States,” said Mr. Peskov. “If you read the text and the title of this document, all this is done in accordance with the law on countering the enemies of the United States.”

Government figures on the list include more than 40 of Mr. Putin’s closest advisers; all 30 members of the cabinet of ministers, including Prime Minister Dimitri A. Medvedev; the heads of many important state agencies and state-run companies; and other key political figures.

Perhaps the most prominent government official not on the list was the central bank governor, Elvira Nabiullina. At least 22 people on the list already had been placed under United States sanctions by the administration of President Barack Obama, which said they had played key roles in fueling the Ukraine crisis.

The list was met with a combination of disbelief and derision in Russia, with mocking comments ricocheting around social media. Some joked that it had taken the Trump administration six months to photocopy the Forbes list of Russian billionaires, since they were all included, as well as the link detailing senior officials on the Kremlin website.

“The list looks like the book ‘Who’s who in Russian politics,’” Arkady V. Dvorkovich, a deputy prime minister included on the list, was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency. Like many, he shrugged it off as merely a list of names. “There is no need for action now.”

The 96 oligarchs on the roster were those Russians worth more than $1 billion, according to the introduction to the document. It was scattered with well-known people including Mikhail Prokhorov, the owner of the Brooklyn Nets, and Eugene Kaspersky, whose antivirustechnology firm has been under fire in the West over allegations that it cooperates with Russian intelligence. One man on the list, Kirill Shamalov, might no longer be in the billionaire’s club since recently divorcing one of Mr. Putin’s daughters, Bloomberg reported.

Kaspersky Labs issued a statement objecting to its founder’s inclusion, saying the company did not have political influence, and Mr. Kaspersky commented on his own Twitter account.

Businessman Gavril Yushvayev, who said he had invested $500 million into Western start-ups, told the online news website The Bell that his overseas partners had been calling to say that they would ignore the list. “Everybody needs people who can invest, regardless of these lists,” he said. “I am not upset, whatever happens, happens.”

The governor of St. Petersburg, Georgiy Poltavchenko, said through a spokesman on Twitter that his inclusion was a sign that he was doing a good job.

The list was prepared after the United States Congress, responding to evidence of Russian hacking and other meddling in the 2016 American presidential election, passed a law in August demanding that the Trump administration prepare within six months a “detailed report” on senior political figures and wealthy businessmen in Russia.

The announcement said there were more names on an unpublished annex provided by the Treasury Department, including lesser officials or businessmen worth less than $1 billion.

The American ambassador to Moscow, Jon M. Huntsman Jr., portrayed it as a simple legal step required by the sanctions-related law passed last summer and little else.

“I would say that we should not allow emotions drive this issue,” he said in an interview with the Echo of Moscow radio station. “It isn’t new sanctions. It is simply a report.”

It is up to the Congress to decide what to do with the report, he said.

The unfocused nature of the list was likely to create more than a little head-scratching. It could provide additional fuel to those who suspect that President Trump is somehow beholden to Russia, since it did not single out any person or entity for additional sanctions and its overall purpose seemed muddy.

Just as Mr. Trump generally refrains from criticizing Russia, Mr. Putin uses practically every blow against American-Russian relations to suggest that while Moscow seeks improved ties with the United States, internal American political actors thwart that goal and Mr. Trump.

In this instance, Mr. Putin cited a peculiar example of the ongoing conspiracy against Mr. Trump — it is not always clear where Mr. Putin gets his information. The American president had not been able to use his “official plane” to fly to Switzerland, Mr. Putin said, in an apparent reference to the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. Mr. Trump did fly to Switzerland and back on Air Force One, however.

The Trump administration also announced Monday that it had decided against imposing any sanctions on countries that buy Russian military equipment, another piece of the legislation, saying that the new law already deterred billions of dollars in such purchases.

Mr. Trump called the law “seriously flawed” when he signed it in August, not least because he cannot ease current sanctions without a Congressional review. Russia initially reacted by forcing the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to slash its staff.

Ivan Nechepurenko and Sophia Kishkovsky contributed reporting.

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