U.S. sanctions Ukrainians over election interference

The United States on Monday imposed sanctions on several Ukrainian individuals and entities over U.S. election interference, accusing them of being associated with a Ukrainian lawmaker linked to efforts by allies of President Donald Trump to dig up dirt on President-elect Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

The United States on Monday imposed sanctions on several Ukrainian individuals and entities over U.S. election interference, accusing them of being associated with a Ukrainian lawmaker linked to efforts by allies of President Donald Trump to dig up dirt on President-elect Joe Biden and his son Hunter. The U.S. Treasury Department accused the seven individuals and four entities of involvement in a Russia-linked foreign influence network associated with pro-Russian Ukrainian parliamentarian Andriy Derkach. He was hit with sanctions by the U.S. government in September over accusations that he tried to interfere in the 2020 U.S. election won by Biden.

The action freezes any U.S. assets of those blacklisted and generally bars Americans from doing business with them. "Russian disinformation campaigns targeting American citizens are a threat to our democracy," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement released by the department.

"The United States will continue to aggressively defend the integrity of our election systems and processes," Mnuchin added. The Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives voted to impeach Trump in December 2019 on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress stemming from the Republican president's request that Ukraine investigate the Bidens ahead of the election. The Republican-led Senate in February 2020 voted to keep Trump in office.

Derkach has been a key figure in promoting unsubstantiated allegations that Hunter Biden improperly used his influence with his father - vice president at the time - to help Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company on whose board he sat, and that Joe Biden improperly pressured Ukraine to fire a top prosecutor who had investigated the firm. These allegations, intended to harm Biden's candidacy, have been seized upon by Trump, his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and some Republican lawmakers. Some of the individuals blacklisted on Monday, notably former Ukrainian government officials Andrii Telizhenko and Konstantin Kulyk, were reported in news media accounts to be sources for Giuliani, who traveled to Ukraine to try to prod officials there to investigate the Bidens.

The Treasury Department also blacklisted the Ukrainian website NABU Leaks, the source of leaked audio of conversations between Biden and former Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko. The conversations, which were picked up by American right-wing media outlets, have been touted by Trump allies as evidence of alleged corruption by Biden or his family - even though the tapes provided no evidence of wrongdoing and were consistent with the positions Biden took publicly at the time.

The origin and purpose of NABU Leaks is not clear but its publications closely align with the agenda and talking points of Derkach, issuing verbatim transcripts of his speeches - in at least one case documented by Ukrainian observers before they are even delivered. NABU Leaks did not immediately respond to a request for comment.