Ukraine crisis: US targets Putin’s daughters in sanctions against Russia
The White House said Wednesday it would sanction Putin’s two children from his now-ended marriage to a former Aeroflot cabin crew member, according to US officials.
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FollowThe latest round of sanctions by the United States on Russia has drawn renewed scrutiny to the family life of Russian President Vladimir Putin, targeting his two daughters, as well as Russia’s biggest public and private banks, as part of a common western effort to starve Vladimir Putin’s war machine of funds.
The sanctions targeting Maria Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova, two adult daughters of Putin’s with his former wife Lyudmila Shkrebneva, were announced by the White House as the UK announced further economic sanctions and restrictions on eight oligarchs, while the EU wrangled over banning Russian coal.
The White House said Wednesday it would sanction Putin’s two children from his now-ended marriage to a former Aeroflot cabin crew member, according to US officials. The European Union, meanwhile, is set to make the same move following discussions among its 27 members, according to diplomats. The EU sanctions, expected to take effect by Friday, would entail a freeze of any assets held in the bloc and a ban on traveling to member countries.
Despite Putin’s domination of Russian politics, he rarely talks about his family and little is known about his personal life or children.
Katerina and Maria have never confirmed publicly the Russian leader is their father. Putin’s marriage to their mother Lyudmila, who was once part of the cabin crew with national carrier Aeroflot, ended with divorce in 2013.
The US says that Katerina Tikhonova, 35, is a tech executive whose work supports the Russian government and its defence industry. Her 36-year-old sister, Maria Vorontsova, leads government-funded programmes that have received billions of dollars from the Kremlin towards genetics research and are personally overseen by Putin, it added.
“These individuals have enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people,” the administration said. “Some of them are responsible for providing the support necessary to underpin Putin’s war on Ukraine. This action cuts them off from the US financial system and freezes any assets they hold in the United States.”
“We believe that many of Putin’s assets are hidden with family members, and that’s why we’re targeting them,” a senior US official told reporters, referring to Putin’s two daughters.
Katerina is most known – at least on YouTube – as an acrobatic rock ‘n’ roll dancer where videos show her performing exhausting routines including flips and somersaults at major international competitions.
But a Reuters news agency investigation from 2015 exposed her in a rather different light, highlighting her connections and influence among Moscow’s elite.
The report says Katerina, who is now deputy director of the Institute for Mathematical Research of Complex Systems at Moscow State University, described herself at the time as the “spouse” of Kirill Shamalov, son of Nikolai Shamalov, a longtime friend of Putin who is also a shareholder in Bank Rossiya. The report estimated the pair’s corporate holdings to be worth about $2bn, in addition to other property and assets. Kirill is already under sanctions.
Maria, meanwhile, studied biology at St Petersburg University and medicine at Moscow State University, and is heavily involved in genetic research work.
Reports in Russian and Western media say she married a Dutch businessman and lived in the Netherlands for a time.
The Reuters report noted that while Maria was specialising in the endocrine system, her husband used to work for Gazprombank, a lender with strong links to the Kremlin elite. No estimates were immediately available for their assets and holdings, and Leonid Volkov, chief strategist for jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, said the marriage was over.
The US president, Joe Biden, directly linked the new measures to the killing of civilians in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, tweeting that he had “made clear that Russia would pay a severe and immediate price for its atrocities” there. On the ground on Wednesday Russia continued to launch heavy shelling on targets in the east, and Ukrainian authorities urged civilians to leave “while the opportunity still exists” before a massive Russian military assault that it expects in the coming days.
Russia denies intentionally attacking civilians and says images of bodies in Bucha north of Kyiv were staged to justify more sanctions against Moscow. Moscow says it is engaged in a "special military operation" designed to demilitarize and “denazify” Ukraine. Ukraine and Western governments reject that as a false pretext for Russia's invasion.
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