Putin's Daughters Now Face Sanctions Over Russian Invasion of Ukraine

It's getting very personal. JL 

Ann Simmons and colleagues report in the Wall Street Journal:

The White House said it would sanction Mr. Putin’s two children from his now-ended marriage to a former Aeroflot cabin crew member. The EU is set to make the same move following discussions among its 27 members. The EU sanctions, to take effect by Friday, would freeze any assets held in the bloc and ban traveling to member countries. The U.S. identified the two as Katerina Vladimirovna Tikhonova and Maria Vladimirovna Vorontsova. Ms. Tikhonova is a tech executive whose work supports the defense industry. Ms. Vorontsova leads programs that receive funding from the Kremlin for genetics research

U.S. and European moves to sanction two adult daughters of Russian President Vladimir Putin cast a spotlight on a family shrouded for years in secrecy.

The White House said Wednesday it would sanction Mr. Putin’s two children from his now-ended marriage to a former Aeroflot cabin crew member, according to U.S. 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.

The U.S. Treasury on Wednesday identified the two as Katerina Vladimirovna Tikhonova and Maria Vladimirovna Vorontsova. The Treasury said Ms. Tikhonova is a tech executive whose work supports the Russian government and defense industry. It said Ms. Vorontsova leads state-funded programs that have received funding from the Kremlin for genetics research, which the Treasury said are personally overseen by Mr. Putin.

The two have previously been kept far from the public view, so much so that the Kremlin has only ever identified them by their first names.

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The moves come after a weekend of reports of alleged atrocities that Ukrainian officials say were committed by Russian troops. Moscow has denied any responsibility for atrocities in territories its army recently occupied in Ukraine. 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday said the sanctions on Mr. Putin’s daughters were difficult to understand and Moscow would retaliate as it sees fit. “Russia will definitely respond,” he said.

EU officials said on Tuesday they were listing dozens of additional senior officials, oligarchs and politicians in their latest sanctions package. The bloc has broadened the criteria for sanctions to make it easier to go after elites close to the Kremlin.

The EU has already blacklisted the son-in-law of Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the former wife of Rosneft Chief Executive Officer Igor Sechin. EU officials said last week they would broaden the number of family members of leading officials and oligarchs to increase the pressure on the Kremlin.

“We are targeting the Kremlin, the political and economic elites supporting Putin’s war in Ukraine,” said Josep Borrell, the EU foreign policy chief, on Tuesday, announcing Brussels’ new sanctions package proposal.

One U.S. official said the move against the two daughters is aimed at Mr. Putin’s personal wealth. “We believe that many of Putin’s assets are hidden with family members, and that’s why we’re targeting them,” the official said Wednesday.

The two Putin daughters were born to Mr. Putin’s former wife, Lyudmila Putina. That relationship ended in 2013. Little is known about them. According to the Kremlin’s website, Mr. Putin and his wife had Maria before leaving for Germany in 1985, where Mr. Putin was based as a KGB officer. Katerina was born in 1986 in the German city of Dresden.

Katerina Vladimirovna Tikhonova was born in Dresden, Germany, where Mr. Putin was stationed in the 1980s.

PHOTO: ANDREY RUDAKOV/BLOOMBERG NEWS

They were named after their maternal and paternal grandmothers—Maria Ivanovna Putina and Katerina Tikhonovna Shkrebneva, according to the Kremlin biography. “According to their mother, Lyudmila, Putin loves his daughters very much,” the biography said. Mr. Putin “always spoiled them, and I had to educate them,” Ms. Putina, the president’s former wife, is cited as saying.

The two women have kept such a low profile that many Russians don’t know what they look like. In an interview with the Russian state news agency, TASS, in October 2020, Mr. Putin acknowledged that he enjoys communicating with his grandchildren but doesn’t like to be open about his family for security reasons.

“I have grandchildren, I am happy. They are very good, sweet, like that,” Mr. Putin told TASS. “I get great pleasure from communicating with them.”

At his annual press conference in 2015, Mr. Putin told the audience that he was proud of his daughters but never “discusses family matters“ publicly, including anything to do with his daughters’ work. “I’m proud of them,” he was cited as saying by TASS. “They continue to study and work. My daughters are fluent in three European languages.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he doesn’t like to be open about his family for security reasons.

PHOTO: MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

He said his daughters weren’t involved in business or politics and he dismissed speculation that they live overseas, insisting that they lived in Russia and had never sought permanent residency anywhere else.

“They didn’t get an education anywhere except Russia. They studied only in Russian universities,” he said. “They are just living their lives.” He declined at the time to comment on media reports that his youngest daughter, Katerina, was in 2015 running the National Intellectual Reserve Center at Lomonosov Moscow State University, a foundation that supports scientific research.

“To talk about where exactly my daughters work and what they do—I have never done this and am not going to do it now, for many reasons, including security issues,” Mr. Putin said. He told the audience that his daughters were never like the children of celebrities and never enjoyed being in the spotlight.

“They just live their lives and do it with dignity,” he said.

The latest EU sanctions proposal also takes aim at Oleg Deripaska, a raw-materials magnate who founded Russian aluminum giant Rusal, diplomats said. Mr. Deripaska once enjoyed a broad network of top-level European political contacts. He was sanctioned by Washington in 2018 as part of a broad response to U.S. allegations of Russian meddling in U.S. elections, cyberattacks and other provocations.

He sued the Treasury Department in 2019, challenging the U.S. sanctions against him. The lawsuit alleged the Treasury Department made false allegations based on rumor and innuendo to support the sanctions. Last month, a U.S. appeals court rejected Mr. Deripaska’s bid to lift the sanctions, upholding an earlier federal judge’s ruling dismissing the appeal. An attempt to reach a representative of Mr. Deripaska, made via Rusal, wasn’t immediately successful.

Mr. Deripaska wrote on social media last month that peace “is very important.” He also predicted that Western sanctions would drive his country into a prolonged economic crisis. The Financial Times first reported his inclusion in the draft EU sanctions list.