The European Union has proposed sanctioning two daughters of Russian President Vladimir Putin in a move that would add pressure on the Russian leader’s closest relatives in response to the invasion of Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
It is also expected that the administration of President Joe Biden will also announce sanctions this week against Putin’s two daughters, the newspaper adds, citing diplomatic sources familiar with this procedure.
According to the newspaper, these measures are included in the new package of sanctions that the EU member states must still approve, and that includes everything from travel bans to asset freezes for Russian businessmen, politicians, officials, and their families.
For its part, the United States could announce these measures today, which include two of the largest Russian banks as well as Maria Putina and Katerina Tikhonova, the two daughters of the leader from his first marriage to Lyudmila Shkrebneva.
The newspaper indicates that Washington tries with these sanctions to continue attacking members of the Russian leader’s inner circle, in response to reports of atrocities that, according to Ukrainian officials, Russian troops committed in Ukraine and that Moscow denies.
Putin does not speak publicly about his family but, according to the Kremlin, he has two daughters with his first wife, Lyudmila Shkrebneva, who have been largely kept out of public life, to the point that many Russians do not know what they look like.
According to Forbes magazine, Maria Putina is a co-owner of Nomeko, a company involved in the construction of a cancer center outside St. Petersburg, and Katerina Tikhonova heads an artificial intelligence institute at Moscow State University.
It is unknown if the Russian leader has other children and the newspaper points out that, in the case of the European Union, it has not been able to confirm whether the daughters subject to sanctions are the ones he has publicly acknowledged.
In 2013, the couple said their marriage was over. The following year, the Kremlin confirmed that the Russian president had completed the divorce proceedings from his wife after a marriage of nearly 30 years.