Who are Vladimir Putin's daughters? Why Maria Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova face sanctions for Ukraine war
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The US has sanctioned Vladimir Putin’s two daughters in response to atrocities committed during the invasion of Ukraine.
The latest package of economic measures targeting President Putin’s allies and the industries funding the war were announced on Wednesday, while Nato foreign ministers were considering how to support Ukraine’s resistance to Moscow’s forces.
It comes after Boris Johnson said the actions of Russian forces in Ukraine appeared close to “genocide”, and pledged Britain would be in the “front rank” of nations imposing new sanctions on Moscow.
Here’s what you need to know about the Russian President’s daughters, and why they have been sanctioned.
Who are Putin’s daughters?President Putin has two adult daughters; Maria Vorontsova, 36, and, Katerina Tikhonova, 35.
Ms Vorontsova is reported to be a specialist in rare diseases in children. She was born in Leningrad.
She is married to Dutch businessman Jorrit Faassen. They used to live in a penthouse on top of the highest residential building in Voorschoten in the Netherlands, but faced calls to be expelled from the country after Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine in 2014.
As of 2015 they were believed to be living in Moscow.
Ms Tikhonova is an academic who was appointed to run an artificial intelligence institute at Moscow State University in 2020. She also used to compete in acrobatic rock’n’roll dance contests. She was born is Dresden in Germany.
Their mother is President Putin’s former wife, Lyudmila Putina, who he married in 1983 and divorced in 2014.
In 2013, Ms Tikhonova married Kirill Shamalov, the son of Nikolay Shamalov, a co-owner of Rossiya Bank. They are reported to have separated in 2018.
The move comes as part of the latest round of sanctions against Russia, which follow news that Ukraine has accused Russian forces of more than 400 war crimes, and a wave of international revulsion at reports of rape and the killings of civilians by President Putin’s troops.
Ukrainian officials have said the bodies of at least 410 civilians have been discovered in Bucha and other towns around the capital, Kyiv, that were recaptured from the Russians as their forces pulled back.
The European Commission has proposed a ban on coal imports from Russia, and a full transaction ban on four key Russian banks, as part of its fifth sanctions package.
In London, a Foreign Office source said announcements would also be coming from the UK side.
On Tuesday, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said economic actions so far were having a “crippling impact” and “pushing the Russian economy back into the Soviet era”.
She said sanctions had frozen more than $350bn (about £266bn) of “Putin’s war chest”, rendering unavailable about 60 per cent of the regime’s $604bn (£459bn) of foreign currency reserves.