Trump Administration Imposes New Sanctions on Putin Cronies

The Trump administration imposed new sanctions on seven of Russia’s richest men and 17 top government officials on Friday in the latest effort to punish President Vladimir V. Putin’s inner circle for interference in the 2016 election and other Russian aggressions.

The sanctions are designed to penalize some of Russia’s richest industrialists, who are seen in the West as enriching themselves from Mr. Putin’s increasingly authoritarian administration.

The sanctions list will only hasten the slide of Washington-Moscow relations. This week, 60 American diplomats left Russia as part of a tit-for-tat series of expulsions that followed last month’s nerve-gas poisoning of Sergei V. Skripal, a former Russian double agent, and his daughter.

Mr. Skripal’s poisoning on British soil prompted more than 20 countries to expel more than 100 Russian diplomats and intelligence officers, the largest such coordinated action ever. British officials believe that Mr. Skripal’s poisoning, which occurred after an assassin smeared a nerve agent on the door handle of his home, was such a risky operation that it was unlikely to have been undertaken without approval from the Kremlin.