Spencer Platt/Getty Images Kremlin calls U.S. sanctions report an attempt to influence elections

The expected release of a sanctions report against Russia by the U.S. government is an effort to interfere in upcoming Russian elections, the Kremlin said Monday.

Monday marks a major deadline for sanctions legislation targeting Russia passed overwhelmingly by Congress last year. The legislation stipulates Monday as the deadline for the Treasury Department to begin imposing sanctions against entities that do businesses with Russia’s defense and intelligence sectors and to produce a list of Russian oligarchs with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.


“We do think this is a direct and obvious attempt timed to coincide with the elections in order to influence them,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday, according to a Reuters report. “We do not agree with this and are convinced that there will be no influence.”

The U.S. intelligence community has said that the Russian government mounted a campaign to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the aim of aiding President Donald Trump’s candidacy and hampering that of Democrat Hillary Clinton. The Kremlin has stridently denied those claims.

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A presidential election in Russia is scheduled for March 18, with Putin widely expected to win handily.

“The publication of this list on its own doesn’t mean anything,” Peskov said of the oligarch list expected to be produced by the Treasury Department. “It isn’t the start of a new sanctions wave. So we will have to analyze what will happen next.”

