The Biden administration is unleashing sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s daughters after evidence of possible war crimes in Bucha emerged over the weekend.
A U.S. official told reporters the decision was made because there is “reason to believe that Putin and many of his cronies and the oligarchs hide their wealth, hide their assets, with family members, that have placed their assets and their wealth in the U.S. financial system, but also many other parts of the world,” CNN reports.
In addition to Putin’s daughters, Maria Putina and Katerina Tikhonova, the sanctions will also affect Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin; the wife and children of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov; and members of Russia’s Security Council, including former president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev.
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They will all be banned from the U.S. financial system, with any assets they hold to be frozen.
Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, was also hit with new sanctions, along with Alfa Bank, meaning that “more than two-thirds of the Russian banking sector” is in a stranglehold, the official said.
“It’s a negative feedback loop. So we deny capital, we deny technology, we deny talent that can flow into Russia, and the combination of the steps that we’re taking create this downward spiral that accelerates the more that Putin escalates,” he said.
The European Union is also considering sanctioning Putin’s daughters, and U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order banning new investments in Russia.
“Even an autocrat like Putin has a social contract with the Russian people. He took away their freedom in exchange for promising stability and so he’s not giving them stability,” the official said.
In tandem with the new round of sanctions, federal prosecutors announced an indictment against Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev for evading sanctions imposed on him earlier “by using co-conspirators to surreptitiously acquire and run media outlets across Europe.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland said “millions of dollars from a U.S. financial institution” that were traceable to Malofeyev had been seized.
The indictment stems from Malofeyev’s hiring of Jack Hanick, a former Fox News producer with whom the DOJ says Malofeyev “conspired” to “illegally transfer a $10 million investment that Malofeyev made in a U.S. bank to a business associate in Greece, in violation of the sanctions blocking Malofeyev’s assets from being transferred.”
Hanick was indicted on charges of violating sanctions and lying to the FBI earlier this month.
