New Biden administration expected to focus on US-Russia relations

The election of Joe Biden as the next US president will trigger significant changes across a whole range of foreign policy issues. Russia, decried as the US enemy, could bear the biggest brunt of the White House’s foreign policy agenda. 

Troubled by the four chaotic years of the departing Trump administration, Biden’s team from its first days will likely proceed by delivering more consistency in policy matters and restoring American advocacy for democratic values.

Clearly, this doesn’t bode well for the autocratic regimes and their agents worldwide that have been able to bolster their authority over the past few years – especially since Biden, a career politician, represents a more traditional American school of international relations. And even if there is widespread anticipation of returning to the Obama years’ foreign policy, it’s equally true that many impulses of the US approach to global affairs will be rather different under a president Biden.

While policy towards China is likely to to remain similar in practice– if not necessarily in rhetoric – the US attitude towards one country in particular is set for a wholesale change: Russia. The Kremlin and its well documented kleptocracy have been handled with velvet gloves under Trump, as was made clear once again in the context of the recent cyber-attack against US institutions. Trump  contradicted his Secretary of State and other top officials when he suggested – without evidence – that China, not Russia, may be behind one of the largest cyber-attacks in US history.

Biden’s tone was markedly different, even if he did not mention Russia by name. “A good defence isn’t enough,” Biden said in a statement about the cyber hack and vowed to impose “substantial costs on those responsible for such malicious attacks, including in coordination with our allies and partners.”

However, it’s evident that the incoming administration will not only punish Russia for the cyberattack and other issuesignored by the Trump administration, including the poisoning of Alexey Navalny – it will also proceed with more significantdiplomatic and legal pressure. This impact may be felt most profoundly by government agencies and their staff, but it is likely it will notably impact private citizens as well. Consequently, sanctions are set to remain  a significant part of the US toolkit for dealing with Russia, although their utilization will likely occur alongside other tools.

One of the potential areas that the Biden administration could take a more concerted effort would be to disrupt money-laundering operations by Russian citizens in the US, in line with the US National Security Strategy of December 2017, which identified Russian dark money laundered in the US as “a key element of domestic security, not only foreign policy.”Indeed, shady Russian funds have been pouring into offshores and Western nations for decades. In a notable instance, Yegor Gaidar, a reformist Russian prime minister in the earliest post-communist days, asked the United States for help hunting down the billions that the KGB had carted away.

Whereas the exact amount of Russian money with unproven origin in the U.S. remains unknown, the problem’s scale could be bigger than originally thought. Take the case of Gavril Yushvaev, a Russian billionaire who, has been making large investments in U.S. companies, including Lyft and a biotech firm that works for the U.S. Defence Department.

According to media reports, his criminal record is said to date back to the 1980s when he served a prison sentence. Yushvaev is now a partner in a group of companies called Trinity, which analysts have connected to the Russian underworld. While the true nature of his connections remains hazy, what is known is that he was recently cited in a Spanish government report as an associate of a Russian banker with alleged links to organized crime and money laundering. It is understood that he continues to invest the money acquired through his enterprises in the United States. He denies any wrongdoing.

Another example cited by some is Sergei Makhlai,a Russian billionaire who, like Yushvaev, reportedly has a criminal record and alleged links to organised crime. He is one of the owners of Togliattiazot (ToAZ), a Russian chemical company that is one of the world’s largest ammonia producers. A naturalized citizen and residing in the United States, he and his father Vladimir are currently the subjects of a corruption investigation in Russia.

Among other things, they stand accused of having created an elaborate scheme to sell ToAZ products below market value to a “straw firm” which then  reportedly resold them at market prices. Makhlai then, it has been claimed, siphoned the funds off to offshore entities, to the tune, allegedly, of $550 million. In July 2019, Makhlai and his associates were found guilty of fraud and sentenced to eight and a half to nine years in prison – in absentia, given that he remains in the US. Litigations continue so if a direct link between Makhlai and illicit funds in the US should be discovered, American courts have jurisdiction to prosecute him as US citizen.