U.S. to impose sanctions on Vladimir Putin and top aide, White House says

Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs an annual extended meeting of the Board of the Russian Interior Ministry, in Moscow, Russia, on February 17, 2022.

The White House announced Friday that the United States will impose sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

The European Union and the United Kingdom had announced similar sanctions earlier in the day.

The U.S. has imposed sanctions on Russian government officials in response to Russia's actions in Ukraine.

The United States has imposed new sanctions against Russia's largest banks and its debt, cutting them off from the U.S. banking system.

Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on Wednesday, sending tens of thousands of Russian troops into dozens of Ukrainian cities with the aim of capturing the capital of the country.

The threat of severe sanctions was meant to be a deterrent to Putin, according to the Biden administration.

The White House shifted its message after that strategy failed this week.

It is not clear how much will be accomplished by individual sanctions.

Putin lists his assets as two apartments and a few vehicles, and he claims his only source of income is his $140,000 salary.

In reality, Putin lives in a home larger than Buckingham Palace and has been photographed wearing watches that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Experts and former Kremlin insiders think that Putin is worth billions of dollars and that he uses the global shadow banking system to hide his money.

According to the Pandora Papers investigation, Putin appears to control assets in Europe. The apartment in Monaco that was owned by a Russian woman who had been romantically linked to Putin was leaked and it showed that she had no apparent source of income.

The registered owner of a shell company that was one of the major shareholders in a Russian state-linked bank that was sanctioned by the United States was also listed in 2010 as the same woman.

The sanctions against Putin will be good news for Ukrainian diplomats in the US.

Oksana Markarova said Friday that sanctions against Putin would be the right thing.

The European Union's decision to sanction Putin and Lavrov was welcomed by Markarova.

Markarova said that Kyiv was grateful for the sanctions.

I was happy to see the sanctions against Russian banks. She told reporters at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington that she was happy to see export controls and personal sanctions.