US and EU sanctions have been imposed on the Russian leader’s adult daughters with Lyudmila’s ex-wife Maria Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova. “We believe that many of Putin’s assets are hidden from family members and that is why we are targeting them,” a senior US official told reporters on Wednesday. The White House said Ms Vorontsova and Ms Tikhonova had been added to the sanctions list “as Putin’s adult children, a person whose property and interests in property have been disqualified”. The new measures have also been imposed on the family of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and on major Russian banks. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Lyudmila’s ex-wife (Getty Images) Ms. Vorontsova, the eldest of two sanctioned daughters, was born on April 28, 1985, to Putin and his then-wife Lyudmila Skrebneva in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad). He now works as a pediatric endocrinologist, specializing in genetics and dwarfism. The United States said Wednesday that Vorontsova was “leading state-funded programs that have received billions of dollars from the Kremlin for genetic research and are personally overseen by Putin.” She spent much of her early life in Dresden, East Germany, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, where her father served as a KGB agent. She reportedly played the violin as a child and continued her studies in biology at St. Petersburg State University and medicine at Moscow State University. She is married to Dutch businessman Jorrit Faassen and the couple now reportedly live in Moscow. Katerina’s sister was born on August 31, 1986 in Dresden and is now an academic and, strangely enough, a former acrobatic rock and roll dancer. He enrolled at the same university as Maria and graduated with a degree in Asian studies, specializing in Japanese history, and also holds degrees in physics and mathematics. The extent of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (PA) Ms. Tikhonova is now director of Innopraktika, a $ 1.7 billion project to set up a science center at Moscow State University, and deputy director of the Institute for Mathematical Systems Research at the same institution. She was married to gas company executive Kirill Shamalov, son of Rossiya Bank co-owner, between 2013 and 2018. The United States has described Ms Tikhonova as a “technology executive whose work is supported by GoR [Russian government] and defense industry “. The United States has said Putin’s assets are hidden from his family. (AP) While they are the only children Putin has recognized, it has long been rumored in the Russian press that he has many other offspring from his relationship with millionaire Svetlana Krivonogich and gold-medal-winning Olympic coach Alina Kabaeva. He always angrily refutes the speculations. The announcement of the sanctions comes as international anger mounts over the atrocities committed by Russian troops on the ground in Ukraine. A mass grave was discovered this week in the city of Bukha near Kyiv, where 20 civilian bodies were left dead in its streets with their hands tied. Allegations of rape and sadistic torture were also widespread in the five weeks since the February 24 conflict erupted. Bucha resident Tetiana Ustymenko cries over her son’s grave, which is buried in the garden of her house (AFP via Getty Images) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky personally visited the site of the massacre on Monday and then accused Russia of involvement in genocide, calling on the UN Security Council to take action against Moscow over what it said were the worst war crimes committed in Europe. since then. the Second World War. He called on the council to set up an international criminal court to prosecute its perpetrators, similar to the 1945-46 Nuremberg Trials. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Boris Johnson agreed with Mr. Zelensky’s assessment on Wednesday and said: “I am afraid when you look at what is happening in Bucha, the revelations we see from what Putin has done in Ukraine do not seem far from genocide. to me.” The Independent has a proud campaign history for the rights of the most vulnerable and we first launched our “Welcome Refugees” campaign during the war in Syria in 2015. Now, as we renew our campaign and start this report on In the wake of the unfolding Ukrainian crisis, we call on the government to move faster and faster to secure aid. To learn more about our Refugee Campaign, click here. To sign the application click here. If you would like to donate, click here for our GoFundMe page.
