The United States announced on Wednesday (6) new economic and financial sanctions against Russia, which fall especially on two large banks and two adult daughters of President Vladimir Putin, increasing pressure on the country’s economy by the invasion of Ukraine.
President Joe Biden linked the escalation of sanctions to evidence gathered that Russian forces deliberately murdered civilians in Butcha, a city outside Kiev.
“I made it clear that Russia would pay a severe and immediate price for its atrocities in Butcha,” Biden tweeted.
Russia denies intentionally attacking civilians and says images of bodies in Butcha were staged to justify punishment against Moscow.
Under the new sanctions, Putin’s two daughters, Maria Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova, are subject to an asset freeze in the United States and isolated from the American financial system.
The same treatment will apply to the wife and daughter of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, as well as members of the Russian Security Council, including former President Dmitry Medvedev.
“These individuals have enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people. Some of them are responsible for providing the necessary support to sustain Putin’s war against Ukraine,” the White House said in a statement.
The new package also includes the harshest possible sanctions against the public bank Sberbank, which Washington says controls a third of Russian banking assets, as well as against Alfa Bank, the country’s largest private bank.
The entities, which had already received more lenient sanctions, will face a freeze on all their assets in the US financial system and will not be able to make any type of transaction with US entities or citizens, according to the White House.
The United States says it also wants to sanction “large strategic public companies”, but has not yet revealed which ones will be
“We believe that many of Putin’s assets are hidden with members of his family and therefore they are in our sights,” a senior US official told reporters, referring to the Russian president’s two daughters.
The official, who declined to be named, told AFP that Washington wanted to create a “vicious circle” by accumulating measures against Moscow.
“We deprive Russia of capital, technology, talent, and the set of measures seeks to create a spiral that accelerates as Putin continues to escalate” the military, added the official, who asked not to be identified.
Almost concurrently with the announcement of these sanctions, Washington reported that Russian billionaire Konstantin Malofeiev would also be punished.
The oligarch is considered one of the main sources of funding for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region and is accused of “trying to circumvent sanctions” against Russia.
Washington said the measures were aimed at making Russia a “pariah” in the world economy, but would make exceptions in the energy sector, the main source of funds for the Russian Treasury.
The White House, as usual, said the measures were coordinated especially with its European allies, which are heavily dependent on Russian gas.
Britain also toughened its punishments against Moscow on Wednesday by sanctioning two banks and suspending Russian gas imports until the end of the year.
Who are Putin’s daughters
According to details of the US sanctions package, Katerina Vladimirovna Tikhonova is a technology executive working for the Russian government and its defense industry.
His other daughter, Maria Vladimirovna Vorontsova, leads programs that have received billions of dollars from the Kremlin for genetic research and are personally overseen by Putin, the United States said.
When single, the two had the surname Putina, a feminine derivation of their father’s surname. Katerina and Maria, however, have never publicly confirmed that they are the Russian leader’s daughters, and he refuses to answer questions about them.
A 2015 Reuters investigation detailed the connections and influence that Katerina, an acrobatic rock ‘n’ roll dancer, has on the new generation of Moscow’s elite.
“Katerina, 29, described herself as the wife of Kirill Shamalov, son of Nikolai Shamalov, a longtime friend of President Putin,” the report said. “Shamalov Senior is a shareholder in Rossiya Bank, which US officials have described as the personal bank of the Russian elite.”
As husband and wife, Kirill and Katerina had corporate stakes worth about $2 billion, according to estimates provided to Reuters by financial analysts, as well as other property and assets.
Putin’s eldest daughter Maria studied biology at St Petersburg University and medicine at Moscow State University, according to the Reuters investigation. She is heavily involved in genetic research, which Putin has described in the past as a field that “will determine the future of the entire world”.
According to Russian and Western media reports, Maria married Dutch businessman Jorrit Joost Faassen.
She had a biomedical career specializing in the endocrine system in 2015, as a doctoral student at the Research Center for Endocrinology in Moscow, and is co-author of a book on “idiopathic growth retardation” in children, the Reuters report reported.
Her husband worked for Gazprombank, a major lender with strong ties to the elite around Putin, the report noted. No estimates were found on his assets and holdings.
Reuters was unable to immediately contact Putin’s daughters, their representatives or the Kremlin for comment on Wednesday’s sanctions.
