BRUSSELS | The United States announced on Wednesday a new round of economic and financial sanctions which it describes as “devastating” once morest Russia, targeting the big banks and the children of Vladimir Putin, according to a statement from the White House.
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A senior US official explained during a conference call that the United States wanted to create “a vicious circle” by accumulating measures since the start of the invasion of Ukraine.
“We are starving (Russia) of capital, we are starving it of technology, we are starving it of talent and all the measures we are taking create a spiral which is accelerating as Putin continues to escalate” military , he assured, on condition of anonymity.
In addition to banning all new investments in Russia, a measure known since Tuesday, the American executive will impose the most severe constraints it can apply to the essential public bank Sberbank, which according to Washington controls a third of the assets. banks in Russia, and the country’s largest private bank, Alfa Bank.
This means that these institutions, already targeted by less severe sanctions, will undergo a freezing of all their assets “in contact with the American financial system”, and that they will be prohibited from any transaction with American actors, according to the White House. .
The United States will also sanction “large strategic public companies”, but did not immediately reveal the list of companies concerned.
The US executive, however, indicated that these measures intended to make Russia a “pariah” of the globalized economy would leave exceptions for the energy sector – the main source of income of the Vladimir regime. Putin.
The White House repeats on each occasion that any announcement of sanctions is closely coordinated, in particular with the Europeans, who are very dependent on Russian gas.
Putin’s daughters too
Washington will also sanction the “adult children” of Vladimir Putin. A senior American official specified that these were the two daughters of the Russian president, therefore now subject to a freeze on their assets in the United States and cut off from the American financial system.
These daughters of Vladimir Putin are known in the Russian media as “Maria Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova”.
Maria and Katerina were born in 1985 and 1986 respectively, from her marriage to Lioudmila Poutina, whose divorce the Russian president announced in 2013.
Very little official information is available on the two young women, and their public appearances are extremely rare.
According to Russian media, Maria Vorontsova, the eldest daughter, is an endocrinologist and is on the board of directors of a Russian medical research company of which she is a co-owner. She would be married to a Dutch businessman.
The youngest daughter would be Katerina Tikhonova, a specialist in mechanical sciences, who is on the scientific council of Moscow State University and manages Innopraktika there, a support fund for young Russian scientists. She also directs the Institute of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Moscow, according to Russian media.
The same treatment will be applied to the wife and daughter of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, as well as to members of the Russian Security Council, including former President and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
