US administration sanctions four Russians for meddling with upcoming presidential election

The United States Administration has sanctioned four Russian individuals on the charges of meddling in the country's presidential elections. The US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Thursday (local time) imposed the sanctions on the Kremlin based individuals for their efforts to interfere in the upcoming presidential elections.

According to a press statement issued by the Department of State, "Treasury designated Andrii Derkach pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13848, for his efforts to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Derkach maintains close ties to Russian intelligence and sought to influence the views of American voters through a Russian-directed covert influence campaign centred on manipulating the American political process to advance Russia's malign interests in Ukraine. This operation was designed to culminate prior to Election Day."

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US sends a clear message

"Treasury also designated three Russian nationals linked to the troll farm Internet Research Agency (also known as Lakhta Internet Research), owned and operated by Kremlin-linked oligarch Yevgeniy Prigozhin. Artem Lifshits, Anton Andreyev, and Darya Aslanova supported the Internet Research Agency's cryptocurrency accounts, facilitating the Internet Research Agency's malign influence campaigns targeting the American people," the statement said.

The Department asserted that the action taken sends a clear signal that the US Administration would stop at nothing "to use all tools of national power to respond to foreign actors that seek to interfere in or otherwise influence our elections by any means."

The United States is due for its Presidential Election which will be held on November 3. Both, the incumbent President Donald Trump and the Presidential nominee by the Democrats Joe Biden have been trading barbs with each other. The Democrats have also introduced Kamala Harris as the vice presidential nominee to target Trump's vote bank from the Indian American community. Harris had also displayed her Indian roots to pursue the Indian diaspora in the US.

(With ANI inputs, image credit: AP)

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