The Trump administration’s long-awaited “name and shame” list of politicians and oligarchs close to Vladimir Putin’s inner circle is “hostile step” that harms relations between the two countries, the Russian president has said.

The so-called Putin list, which contain 114 politicians and 96 oligarchs, was released late on Monday and includes Dmitry Medvedev, the prime minister, as well as presidential aides, ministers, leaders of state companies and intelligence officials. The Kremlin has said it is an admission that the US views the entire Russian political and business elite as its foes.



Speaking at a campaign event in Moscow, Putin, who is running for president at the March election, joked on Tuesday that he felt “slighted” that he himself was not on the list.



Putin described the list as a “hostile step” but said Moscow does not want to make the situation worse and is eager to “develop the relations as much as our American counterparts are willing to.”

Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea football club, is also on the list, as is Alisher Usmanov, who owns a large stake in Arsenal. A separate, undisclosed list of Kremlin-linked figures was also compiled.

The publication of the document was part of the Congress-mandated retaliation, approved reluctantly by President Donald Trump, for alleged Russian meddling in the US presidential vote. Although those named will not face immediate US sanctions, such as visa bans or asset freezes, their inclusion on the list is likely to complicate their dealings with US and European banks.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said the name of the US law under which the list was compiled – “On countering America’s adversaries through sanctions” – signified that “de facto everyone has been called an adversary of the United States”.

Prior to its publication, Peskov, who is also on the list, said that it was a “direct and obvious” attempt by the US to influence Russia’s presidential elections. Putin, who has ruled since 2000, is widely expected to secure another six-year term of office at the 18 March vote.

Konstantin Kosachev, head of the Russian parliament’s international affairs committee, on Tuesday said: “The US special services, despairing of finding the promised, and most importantly, provable compromising material against Russian politicians, simply copied out the Kremlin telephone directory.” He also said the list was evidence of “political paranoia” in the US.



Alexei Navalny, the opposition figurehead, welcomed the list, which he said included a number of figures that he had previously accused of high-level corruption. “We are pleased that they have been recognised as crooks and thieves at an international level,” he wrote on Twitter. He questioned, however, why some Russian businessmen with no apparent ties to the government, such as Arkady Volozh, founder and CEO of the search engine Yandex, were included.

Others noted that the oligarch section of the list was simply copied name for name from the Forbes 2016 list of Russia’s richest businesspeople, while the part detailing presidential aides was apparently copied from the Kremlin website.

“What classified ‘intel’ was used to compose this list? I see no evidence of that at all. My research assistant could have done it in an hour – maybe less,” wrote Michael McFaul, the former US ambassador to Russia, on Twitter.