On Tuesday, Mr. Biden spoke with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, warning Mr. Putin about the Russian troop buildup on Ukraine’s border and in Crimea. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on Wednesday that the call was meant to emphasize the consequences of Russia’s activities, but it was unclear if Mr. Biden telegraphed any of his administration’s pending moves.
The New Washington
The Biden administration has already carried out one round of sanctions against Russia, for the poisoning of the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny.
Those sanctions were similar to a series of actions that European nations and Britain took in October and expanded in March. Allied officials said that while the American response on Mr. Navalny was closely coordinated, the sanctions imposed for the election interference, bounties and hacking were meant to be more unilateral.
While Biden administration officials were for a while considering taking action only in response to the hacking, they decided to join that move with retaliations for other Russian actions, according to officials. Additionally, penalties coordinated with allies for Russia’s increased threat to Ukraine were expected, said one person familiar with the announcement.
The C.I.A. presented the Trump administration with an intelligence assessment that Russia had covertly offered to pay bounties to militant fighters to incentivize more killings of Americans in Afghanistan. But while the National Security Council at the Trump White House initially led an interagency effort to come up with response options, months passed and the White House did not authorize anything — not even the mildest option, delivering a diplomatic warning.
After the existence of the C.I.A. assessment and the White House’s inaction on it became public, there was bipartisan outrage in Congress. As a candidate, Mr. Biden raised the issue of the suspected bounties, and once in office, he ordered his intelligence officials to put together a full report on Russian efforts against Americans.
While the Biden administration has not released any new information on the suspected bounties, it did make public a report on Russian election interference. That report said that Mr. Putin had authorized extensive efforts to hurt Mr. Biden’s candidacy during the 2020 election, including by mounting covert operations to influence people close to President Donald J. Trump.