UPDATE: NBC News cites three U.S. officials in reporting sanctions will be coming Friday, but one points out the substantial delay has given possible targets plenty of time to protect their money.
The officials did not provide names of any of the targeted individuals or the number. One former senior U.S. intelligence official said, "Some of the names will be very familiar, but they may not be the right names."
(...)
One U.S. official noted that the delay in initiating sanctions against the oligarchs responsible for meddling in the 2016 U.S. election has muted their effect. He said that the oligarchs have had a year to restructure their U.S. holdings. "They had to know these were coming," he said.
New Russia sanctions will likely target oligarchs with ties to Putin (NBC News)
U.S. officials say the administration will issue new sanctions against Russia in the next couple of days, and this round finally would impact oligarchs connected to the Russian president.
The sanctions are economic and designed to target oligarchs with ties to President Vladimir Putin, the officials said. The final number facing punitive action remains fluid, the U.S. officials said, but is expected to include at least a half a dozen people under sanctions powers given to the president by Congress.
(...)
Officials spoke about the sanctions on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss pending actions.
On Tuesday night, outgoing national security adviser H.R. McMaster called on the United States to take a tougher line against Moscow, saying, “We have failed to impose sufficient costs.”
The remark came hours after President Trump said in a White House news conference that “nobody has been tougher on Russia than I have.”
The Post says the Treasury Department is working from the "list of influential Russian political and business leaders" it put out in January. However, that list was mocked at the time for being a cut-and-paste job that pulled from Forbes and the Kremlin website.
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has said at least four times since the administration blew off its end of January implementation deadline that sanctions were imminent. The sanctions that finally did emerge on March 15th had no impact on Putin or his closest allies.
The Trump administration's approach to Russian aggression has been unreliable and inconsistent. While the president did approve the expulsion of 60 diplomats in solidarity with Britain and more than 20 other nations as a response to Russia's likely poisoning of an ex-spy and his daughter on British soil, Russia can send back just as many new personnel to replace those returning to Russia.
TASS:
"As with similar incidents in the past, the Russian government remains free to request accreditation for vacant positions in its bilateral mission. Any requests for new diplomatic accreditation will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis," the source said.
"The Russian Federation has not informed us that it intends to reduce the total number of personnel allowed in our bilateral Mission," the [State Department] spokesperson said.
WaPo:
In recent days, the Trump administration has contemplated additional actions to publicly condemn Russian aggression. Last Friday, the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Jon Huntsman Jr., told administration officials that he wanted to hold a news conference in Moscow about Russia’s expulsion of U.S. diplomats from the country, according to officials familiar with the matter.
Ultimately, the administration chose not to hold the news conference for reasons that remain unclear, but Huntsman did appear in a YouTube video explaining Washington’s decision.
In Congress, the Trump administration continues to face pressure from Russia hawks in both parties to take aggressive action against Putin. In an interview, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham said that while he admired the administration’s moves, he believed they had been tried by other administrations and had failed. He said the United States needed to build an alliance of countries that rely on Russia for oil and gas and help them find new opportunities.
“We have to hit them by taking away their customers,” he said.
Trump administration to impose fresh sanctions against Russia (WaPo)
Russia free to send other diplomats to replace expelled ones — Department of State (TASS)