Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs an annual prolonged assembly of the Board of the Russian Interior Ministry, in Moscow, Russia, on February 17, 2022.
Alexey Nikolsky | AFP | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — The United States will impose a slate of sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the White House introduced Friday.
The United Kingdom and the European Union had introduced comparable sanctions earlier within the day.
Putin and Lavrov be a part of a rising checklist of elite Russian authorities officers the U.S. has sanctioned in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
Twice this week, the United States has introduced new sanctions in opposition to Russia’s largest banks and its sovereign debt, reducing them off from the U.S. banking system.
Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on Wednesday, sending tens of 1000’s of Russian troops into dozens of Ukrainian cities with the obvious intention of capturing Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.
In the weeks main up to the invasion, the Biden administration mentioned the specter of extreme sanctions was supposed to function a deterrent to Putin.
But that technique failed this week, and since then the White House has shifted its message to focus on the punitive impression of sanctions.
It’s unclear how a lot shall be completed by sanctioning Putin individually, nevertheless.
Putin publicly claims his salary of roughly $140,000 is his only source of income and lists his belongings as two flats and a couple of automobiles.
In actuality, Putin lives in a palatial residence bigger than Buckingham Palace and has been photographed repeatedly wearing watches that price tons of of 1000’s of {dollars}.
Experts and former Kremlin insiders imagine Putin is price billions of dollars and that he makes use of the worldwide shadow banking system to cover his cash.
Putin additionally seems to management belongings in Europe, in accordance to the Pandora Papers investigation, revealed in October 2021. The leaked paperwork revealed a $4.1 million apartment in Monaco that was owned by a Russian girl who didn’t have any obvious supply of revenue however who had been romantically linked to Putin for years.
That similar girl, Svetlana Krivonogikh, was additionally listed in 2010 because the registered proprietor of a shell firm that was one of many main shareholders in a Russian state-linked financial institution sanctioned by the United States in 2014.
The sanctions in opposition to Putin shall be welcome information to Ukrainian diplomats within the United States.
Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova mentioned Friday that sanctions in opposition to Putin “could be the best factor.”
Markarova, who’s the previous minister of finance, welcomed the European Union’s choice to sanction Putin and Lavrov.
Markarova additionally mentioned that Kyiv was grateful for the sanctions introduced Thursday by the Biden administration.
“I used to be very completely happy to see the sanctions in opposition to main Russian banks. I used to be very completely happy to see their export controls, I used to be very completely happy to see the non-public sanctions,” she informed reporters Friday on the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington.