MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin castigated the United States on Friday for trying to punish Russia but said his country will not immediately retaliate and instead will wait for a new U.S. approach by Donald Trump. The president-elect praised Putin’s move and called him “very smart.”
Putin said no U.S. diplomats will be ousted in retaliation for President Barack Obama’s decision to impose sanctions and expel Russian diplomats over allegations of Russian meddling in the American presidential election. The Russian leader said he reserves the right to hit back in the future, but suggested it will be unnecessary because he expects to work with Trump’s administration to improve U.S.-Russia ties.
Still, Putin called Obama’s move a “provocation aimed at further undermining Russian-American relations” less than a month before Trump takes office. In addition to sanctions targeting Russian spy agencies, the U.S. kicked 35 Russian diplomats out of the U.S. and said they were spies.
Trump’s reaction, as it often does, came via Twitter. “Great move on delay (by V. Putin),” Trump tweeted. “I always knew he was very smart!”
The move by the incoming president to side with a foreign adversary over the sitting president was a dramatic departure from typical diplomatic practice, further fueling the burgeoning controversy over what the Obama administration says was a cyberattack against America’s political system.
Putin’s decision to hold off on retaliation came as a surprise; tit-for-tat expulsions are common practice.
“The Russian diplomats returning home will spend the New Year holidays with their relatives and dear ones,” Putin said in a statement published on the Kremlin website. “We will not create problems for U.S. diplomats. We will not expel anybody. Moreover, I am inviting all children of U.S. diplomats accredited in Russia to the New Year and Christmas parties at the Kremlin.”
The diplomatic confrontation between Washington and Moscow, which had been festering even before Trump won the Nov. 8 presidential election, puts pressure on him not to let Russia off the hook after he takes office on Jan. 20.
Russia’s government had threatened retaliation, and it continues to deny U.S. accusations that it hacked and stole emails to try to help Trump win. Trump said the U.S. should move on, but in a sign he was no longer brushing off the allegations, he said he plans to meet with U.S. intelligence leaders next week to learn more. Yet he could easily pull back the sanctions, and has insisted that Obama and Democrats are merely attempting to delegitimize his election.
Senior Obama administration officials said that even with the penalties, the U.S. had reason to believe Russia would hack other nations’ elections and might well try to hack American elections in 2018 or 2020. Though the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a joint report on “Russian malicious cyber activity” the government still has not released a broader report Obama has promised detailing Russia’s efforts to interfere with U.S. elections.
The report has been eagerly anticipated by those hoping to make it politically untenable for Trump to continue questioning whether Russia was really involved.