“Punishment is unavoidable”. The US imposes sanctions on the daughters of Putin and Lavrov. The largest banks Sberbank and Alfa-Bank do not escape this fate

The US announced the sanctions against two daughters of the russian dictator Vladimir Putin, wife and daughters of Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, as well as shutting out two largest russian banks Sberbank and Alfa-Bank.  

Dmitriy Medvedev and Mikhail Mishustin will not shy away from sanctions as well. The White House announced these new sanctions. G7 and Europe will also join the sanction package imposed on Russia. 

“Today, the US together with G7 and EU will continue imposing tough and immediate economic sanctions on Putin regime because of all horrors and atrocities committed in Ukraine, including Bucha massacre. We will record and make public the information about these atrocities and use all mechanisms available to bring those who are guilty to justice”, the White House announces.  

New sanctions will cripple the Russian economy and Putin regime. This time new blocking sanctions were imposed on the largest financial institutions, notably Sberbank and the largest private bank Alfa-Bank. 

It will freeze any assets of Sberbank and Alfa-Bank related to the American financial system and ban American citizens from dealing with them. Currently, Sberbank owns one third of all assets of the Russian banking system and is of vital importance to the Russian economy. Alfa-Bank is the fourth largest financial institution in Russia. 

New investments in Russia by American citizens are also banned. President Biden will sign the new enactment which also includes the ban on investing in Russia by American citizens irrespective of their place of residence. It will cut off the Russian economy even further from the world economy. 

Furthermore, the Minister of Finance of the US banned Russia from paying out the debt using funds under the US jurisdiction. Currently, sanctions don’t exclude paying out the Russian national debt using the funds outside the US jurisdiction. However, Russia is a global “outsider” and it will have to choose between exhausting its own resources to pay out the debt or drive into recession. 

Equally important are the sanctions imposed on the Russian elite and family members, namely Putin’s children, Ekaterina Tikhonova and Mariya Vorontsova, wife and daughter of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Lavrov, Security Council member of Russia, including former president and Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. It will cut them off from the US financial system and freeze their assets which they own in the US. 

They are equally accountable for supporting Putin’s war against Ukraine. 

In addition, the statement of the British Minister of Foreign Affairs was made public today. The assets of Sberbank and Credit Bank will be frozen. All investments in Russia will be banned. Until 2022, Britain invested 11 billion pounds in Russia. The sanctions will strategically cripple the Russian economy. EU also plans to cut the dependency from Russian coal and gas, and eventually shut off Russian oil and gas as soon as possible 

According to the Financial Times, relying on an EU sanction list published online, EU plans to include the head of Russian Sberbank German Gref and Russian aluminum oligarch Oleg Deripaska in the sanction list. 

Sanctions might be imposed on Aleksandr Shulgin, head of russian platforms Ozon and Boris Rotenberg, one of the closest business partners of Putin. Said Kerimov, owner of the largest Russian gold mining company “Polyus”, was also included in the sanction list. 

Putin’s daughters from his first marriage are also subject to sanctions for gaining profit from the Russian government.