PALM BEACH, Fla./ MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Friday praised Russian President Vladimir Putin for refraining from retaliation in a dispute over spying and cyber attacks, in another sign that the Republican plans to patch up badly frayed relations with Moscow. 
 
 Putin earlier on Friday said he would not hit back for the U.S. expulsion of 35 suspected Russian spies by President Barack Obama, at least until Trump takes office on Jan. 20. 
 
 “Great move on delay (by V. Putin) - I always knew he was very smart!” Trump wrote on Twitter from Florida, where he is on vacation. 
 
 Obama on Thursday ordered the expulsion of the Russians and imposed sanctions on two Russian intelligence agencies over their involvement in hacking political groups in the Nov. 8 U.S. presidential election. 
 
 “We will not expel anyone,” Putin said in a statement, adding that Russia reserved the right to retaliate. 
 
 “Further steps towards the restoration of Russian-American relations will be built on the basis of the policy which the administration of President D. Trump will carry out,” he said. 
 
 In a separate development, a code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont electric utility, the Washington Post reported on Friday, citing unnamed U.S. officials. 
 
 The Russians did not actively use the code to disrupt operations of the utility, the officials told the Post, but penetration of the nation’s electrical grid is significant because it represents a potentially serious vulnerability. 
 
 Trump has repeatedly praised Putin and nominated people seen as friendly toward Moscow to senior administration posts, but it is unclear whether he would seek to roll back Obama’s actions, which mark a post-Cold War low in U.S.-Russian ties. 
 
 Related Coverage Russians leave country retreats in the U.S., ordered out by Obama 
 
 Trump has brushed aside allegations from the CIA and other intelligence agencies that Russia was behind the cyber attacks.” It’s time for our country to move on to bigger and better things,” Trump said on Thursday, though he said he would meet with intelligence officials next week. 
 
 U.S. intelligence agencies say Russia was behind hacks into Democratic Party organizations and operatives before the presidential election. Moscow denies this. U.S. intelligence officials say the Russian cyber attacks aimed to help Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. 
 
 Russian officials have portrayed the sanctions as a last act of a lame-duck president and suggested Trump could reverse them when he takes over from Obama, a Democrat. 
 
 A senior U.S. official on Thursday said that Trump could reverse Obama’s executive order, but doing so would be inadvisable. 
 
 Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the Obama administration “a group of embittered and dimwitted foreign policy losers.” 
 
 REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION 
 
 Should Trump seek to heal the rift with Russia, he might encounter opposition in Congress, including from fellow Republicans. 
 
 Republican John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Friday that Russia must face a penalty for the cyber attacks. 
 
 “When you attack a country, it’s an act of war,” McCain said in an interview with the Ukrainian TV channel “1+1” while on a visit to Kiev. 
 
 U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin walk into a photo opportunity before their meeting at the United Nations General Assembly in New York September 28, 2015. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque 
 
 “And so we have to make sure that there is a price to pay, so that we can perhaps persuade the Russians to stop these kind of attacks on our very fundamentals of democracy,” added McCain, who has scheduled a hearing for Thursday on foreign cyber threats. 
 
 Other senior Republicans, as well as Democrats, have urged a tough response to Moscow. 
 
 A total of 96 Russians are expected to leave the United States including expelled diplomats and their families. 
 
 Trump will find it very difficult to reverse the expulsions and lift the sanctions given that they were based on a unanimous conclusion by U.S. intelligence agencies, said Eugene Rumer, who was the top U.S. intelligence analyst for Russia from 2010 until 2014. 
 
 But that might not prevent Trump from improving ties to Russia, said Rumer, now director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a policy institute. “If Mr. Trump wants to start the relationship anew, I don’t think he needs to walk these sanctions back. He can just say this was Obama’s decision,” said Rumer. 
 
 As part of the sanctions, Obama told Russia to close two compounds in the United States that the administration said were used by Russian personnel for “intelligence-related purposes.” 
 
 Convoys of trucks, buses and black sedans with diplomatic license plates left the countryside vacation retreats outside Washington and New York City without fanfare on Friday. 
 
 A former Russian Foreign Ministry employee told Reuters that the facility in Maryland was a dacha used by diplomatic staff and their children. The 45-acre complex includes a Georgian-style brick mansion, swimming pool, tennis courts and cottages for embassy staff. 
 
 Neighbors said the Russians were a lively bunch, seen water-skiing in summer and known for throwing a large, annual Labor Day party. 
 
 The Russian consulate in San Francisco said on its Facebook page, “We hate to have to say goodbye to close to a dozen of our colleagues, our friends.” Among those expelled was the consulate chef. 
 
 Slideshow (6 Images) 
 
 Obama had promised consequences after U.S. intelligence officials blamed Russia for hacks intended to influence the 2016 election. Officials accused Putin of personally directing the efforts and primarily targeting Democrats. 
 
 Washington also put sanctions on two Russian intelligence agencies, the GRU and the FSB, four GRU officers and three companies that Obama said “provided material support to the GRU’s cyber operations.” ||||| Russia criticized the sanctions and vowed retaliation. 
 
 “Such steps of the U.S. administration that has three weeks left to work are aimed at two things: to further harm Russian-American ties, which are at a low point as it is, as well as, obviously, deal a blow on the foreign policy plans of the incoming administration of the president-elect,” Dmitri S. Peskov, the spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin, told reporters. 
 
 Konstantin Kosachyov, the head of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of the Russian Parliament, told Interfax that “this is the agony not even of ‘lame ducks,’ but of ‘political corpses.’” 
 
 Image Igor Valentinovich Korobov Credit Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation 
 
 Despite the international fallout and political repercussions surrounding the announcement, it is not clear how much effect the sanctions will have, except on the ousted diplomats, who have until midday Sunday to leave the country. G.R.U. officials rarely travel to the United States, or keep assets here. 
 
 The four Russian intelligence officials are Igor Valentinovich Korobov, the chief of the G.R.U., and three deputies: Sergey Aleksandrovich Gizunov, Igor Olegovich Kostyukov and Vladimir Stepanovich Alexseyev. 
 
 Image President-elect Donald J. Trump responded to the Russian sanctions late Thursday by reiterating a call to “move on.” Credit Kevin Hagen for The New York Times 
 
 The administration also put sanctions on three companies and organizations that it said supported the hacking operations: the Special Technology Center, a signals intelligence operation in St. Petersburg, Russia; a firm called Zorsecurity that is also known as Esage Lab; and the Autonomous Noncommercial Organization Professional Association of Designers of Data Processing Systems, whose lengthy name, American officials said, was cover for a group that provided special training for the hacking. 
 
 Still, the sanctions go well beyond the modest sanctions imposed against North Korea for its attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment two years ago, which Mr. Obama said at the time was an effort to repress free speech — a somewhat crude comedy, called “The Interview,” imagining a C.I.A. plot to assassinate Kim Jung-un, the country’s leader. ||||| US President Barack Obama has "ordered a number of actions in response to the Russian government's aggressive harassment of US officials and cyber operations aimed at the US election" (AFP Photo/MANDEL NGAN) 
 
 Washington (AFP) - President Barack Obama on Thursday unleashed a barrage of retaliatory measures against Moscow for meddling in the US election, imposing sanctions on two intelligence agencies, expelling 35 agents and shuttering two Russian compounds inside the United States. 
 
 Making good on a promise to punish Vladimir Putin's government for allegedly trying to tilt the 2016 election in Donald Trump's favor, Obama unveiled a broad range of steps that will inflame tensions with both Moscow and the president-elect. 
 
 US intelligence had concluded that a hack-and-release of Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton staff emails was ordered by the Kremlin and was designed to put the Republican real estate mogul in the Oval Office. 
 
 "I have ordered a number of actions in response to the Russian government's aggressive harassment of US officials and cyber operations aimed at the US election," Obama said in a statement. 
 
 Trump said that while he believes the US should "move on to bigger and better things," he would meet with intelligence leaders next week for a briefing on the situation. 
 
 In response to the hacks -- dubbed "Grizzly Steppe" by US officials -- Obama announced sanctions against Russia's military intelligence agency, known as GRU, and the FSB -- the KGB's successor. 
 
 The 35 Russian intelligence operatives -- based at the Russian embassy in Washington and the consulate in San Francisco -- have been declared "persona non grata" and ordered to leave the country within 72 hours. 
 
 US officials also moved to close two Russian compounds in New York and Maryland. 
 
 The latter facility, a summer house a short drive from the US capital, was once featured in a Washington lifestyle magazine and was described as a stately home surrounded by lush gardens on the banks of the Chester River, with an "impressive collection of German and Hungarian porcelains." 
 
 The US government said it is now used "for intelligence-related purposes." 
 
 Obama warned of further covert actions. 
 
 "These actions follow repeated private and public warnings that we have issued to the Russian government, and are a necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm US interests in violation of established international norms of behavior," he said. 
 
 Those warnings, officials said, included a personal message from Obama to Putin when the two leaders met briefly in Hangzhou, China in September. 
 
 - Russian reprisals? - 
 
 Moscow quickly rejected US accusations of cyber-interference as "unfounded," and vowed to retaliate. 
 
 Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov accused the Obama administration of trying to "definitively destroy US-Russia relations which have already reached a low." 
 
 He said Moscow would "react in an adequate manner based on the principles of reciprocity." 
 
 US officials said they were aware of reports that Moscow may have ordered the closure of the Anglo-American School in the Russian capital -- attended by many children of diplomats -- but they could not confirm those reports. 
 
 Trump has questioned whether Russia really tipped the electoral scale, painting Obama's accusations as a thinly veiled effort by a Democratic president to delegitimize a Republican victory. 
 
 While Trump has already received intelligence briefings about the election and substantial evidence is in the public sphere, his pledge to meet with intelligence chiefs could provide a face-saving opportunity to further soften his stance. 
 
 Obama pointedly stated that "all Americans should be alarmed by Russia's actions." 
 
 - Could Trump change course? - 
 
 The timing of his actions leave Trump and Moscow in a difficult position. 
 
 Any attempt by the mogul-turned-politico to reverse Obama's sanctions once he takes office on January 20 would be widely seen as condoning Russian interference. 
 
 That proposition was further complicated by Obama linking the sanctions to harassment of US diplomats in Moscow, which Washington described as "unprecedented" in the post-Cold War era. 
 
 "These are executive actions," said a senior Obama administration official. 
 
 "If a future president decided that he wanted to allow in a large tranche of Russian intelligence agents, presumably a future president could invite that action. We think it would be inadvisable." 
 
 Trump's fellow Republicans are also limiting his room for maneuver, increasingly distancing themselves from his pro-Russian stance.
– In retaliation for Russia's election-influencing hacking, the Obama administration is kicking 35 Russian intelligence operatives out of the US, the New York Times reports. The operatives, who Reuters refers to as diplomats, are part of the Russian embassy in Washington DC and the Russian consulate in San Francisco. They'll have 72 hours to leave the country. The White House also placed new sanctions on Russia's FSB and GRU intelligence agencies, according to AFP. The agencies are believed to have been involved in hacking the Democratic National Committee and others. Finally, the administration is closing Russian compounds in Maryland and New York believed to be used for intelligence purposes. The Times calls it the "strongest American response ever taken to a state-sponsored cyberattack." Obama calls the response both "necessary and appropriate." "I have ordered a number of actions in response to the Russian government's aggressive harassment of US officials and cyber operations aimed at the US election," Obama said in a statement. The State Department says US officials in Moscow are regularly harassed by Russian security agents and traffic police; Thursday's actions are in response to that on top of election-related hacking. The move puts the onus on Donald Trump to lift the sanctions when he takes office, officially signalling that US intelligence agencies can't be trusted. When asked about the situation Wednesday, Trump said: "The whole age of computer has made it where nobody knows exactly what is going on."