The United States and its allies have imposed sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s two daughters as the West looks to penalise Moscow for the killing of Ukrainian civilians.
Justifying the decision, a US official said: “We believe that many of Putin’s assets are hidden with family members, and that’s why we’re targeting them.”
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The European Union is also expected to follow suit as it discusses imposition of fresh sanctions against Russia among its 27 members. 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 moves come after reports of alleged atrocities that Ukrainian officials say were committed by Russian troops. Moscow has, however, denied any responsibility.
As the spotlight now shines upon a family shrouded in secrecy for years, we take a look at who Putin’s daughters are.
The family
Putin has two children, Maria and Katerina, from his marriage to Lyudmila Putina, a former Aeroflot steward whom he divorced in 2013, becoming the first Russian leader to divorce since Peter the Great in 1698. According to the Kremlin’s website, Putin and his wife had Maria before leaving for Germany in 1985, where he was based as a KGB officer. Katerina was born in 1986 in the German city of Dresden.
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. Putin “always spoiled them, and I had to educate them,” she is cited as saying.
Putin, who has very rarely spoken publicly about his children, responded to questions at his annual press conference in 2015, saying his daughters had not fled the country, as had been speculated.
“They live in Russia. They have never been educated anywhere except Russia. I am proud of them; they continue to study and are working,” he had said. “My daughters speak three European languages fluently. I never discuss my family with anyone. They have never been ‘star’ children, they have never got pleasure from the spotlight being directed on them. They just live their own lives.”
Putin had also added that his daughters were “taking the first steps in their careers”, and were “not involved in business or politics”. However, both daughters have since launched business ventures.
The two have been kept so far from the public view that even the Kremlin has only ever identified them by their first names.
Katerina, who uses the surname of her maternal grandmother, studied at St Petersburg State University and Moscow State University and has a master’s degree in physics and mathematics. The more famous of the two daughters, Katerina, in 2013, came fifth in the world dancing championships in Switzerland. It was footage from her dance competitions that helped people identify her as Putin’s daughter.
Married to Kirill Shamalov, the younger son of Nikolai Shamalov, a close confidant of Putin and co-owner of Rossiya Bank, the two, according to an investigation by the Reuters in 2015, have corporate holdings worth more than $2 billion, as well as a luxury £4m beachfront villa in the French resort of Biarritz. Krill is already facing sanctions by the United Kingdom.
According to the Reuters report, Katerina, now, is the deputy director of the Institute for Mathematical Research of Complex Systems at Moscow State University. A Guardian report states that she also heads the $1.7 billion “artificial intelligence issues and intellectual systems” institute at the university.
Putin’s elder daughter Maria Vorontsova, 36, is a paediatric endocrinologist, studying the effects of hormones on the body. She co-wrote a book on stunted growth in children, and is listed as a researcher at the Endocrinology Research Centre in Moscow. She’s also a businesswoman with پراکسی Russia identifying her as co-owner of a company planning to build a massive medical centre.
In 2013, Maria married Russian-born Dutch businessman Jorrit Faassen, and the couple lived in the penthouse of an exclusive Amsterdam apartment building. In 2014, some Dutch neighbours called for her to be expelled from the country after the downing of MH17 by pro-Russian forces over Ukraine.
Recently a group from Amsterdam had appealed to Maria to plead with her father to end the invasion of Ukraine. A sign placed on land owned by the couple read: “Less than 2,000km from your peaceful piece of free land, your father is decimating an entire free country and its people. It seems your old man is hard to reach and clearly impossible to stop by even his hangmen. But as we all know, fathers and daughters are a different story.”
Why the secrecy?
Putin’s two daughters have kept such a low profile that even the Russians do not know what they look like.
During a press conference in 2019, Putin declined to directly answer a question about his daughters’ growing business clout and their ties to the government. He referred to Maria and Katerina as “women”, never acknowledging them as his children. “I am proud of them. They continue to study and they work,” Putin had said. “They are not involved in any business activity and they are not involved in politics. They are not trying to push their way anywhere,” he added.
Opening up about his family a bit, Putin, in an interview with the Russian state news agency TASS, had 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,” Putin told TASS. “I get great pleasure from communicating with them.”
What brought the spotlight upon them?
Maria and Katerina, who have been off the radar for most of their lives, had the spotlight on themselves after their names featured on America’s new list of sanctions.
“We have reason to believe that Putin, and many of his cronies, and the oligarchs, hide their wealth, hide their assets, with family members that place their assets and their wealth in the U.S. financial system, and also many other parts of the world,” a senior US administration official told reporters, according to news agency Reuters.
“We believe that many of Putin’s assets are hidden with family members, and that’s why we’re targeting them,” the official added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The sanctions’ list also includes the daughter and wife of Russian foreign affairs minister Sergei Lavrov. The US also banned Americans from investing in Russia, and targeted Russian financial institutions and Kremlin officials, in response to what President Joe Biden condemned as Russian “atrocities” in Ukraine.
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