President Biden unveiled new sanctions Thursday targeting influential Russians and President Vladimir Putin’s yachts on the 99th day of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine — but two oligarchs linked to his son Hunter Biden again were spared.
The slow rollout of sanctions comes despite the president threatening “swift and severe” penalties ahead of the invasion, which began Feb. 24.
New US-targeted individuals include the steel and gold-mining oligarch Alexey Mordashov, Putin-linked money manager Sergei Roldugin, billionaire property developer God Nisanov, electronics executive Evgeny Novitsky, banker Sergey Gorkov and Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova.
The Treasury Department also sanctioned two yachts that Putin allegedly co-owns and the Monaco-based yacht brokerage Imperial Yachts and its Russian CEO, Evgeniy Kochman.
The US released photos of the Russian leader’s alleged pleasure boats — the Russia-flagged Graceful and Cayman Islands-flagged Olympia — but did not specify their current whereabouts.
“Putin has taken numerous trips on these yachts, including a 2021 trip in the Black Sea where he was joined by Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the OFAC-designated corrupt ruler of Belarus, who has supported Russia’s war against Ukraine,” the department added.
Washington also “targeted two additional yachts linked to Putin, Shellest and Nega, which are owned by the Russian company Non-Profit Partnership Revival of Maritime Traditions,” the Treasury Department said.
US economic sanctions can have a global bite and result in companies and individuals being unable to easily transact business or retrieve assets.
Money manager Roldugin was described by the Treasury Department as Putin’s financial “middle-man” and a “close friend and part of a system that manages President Putin’s offshore wealth.”
“The two have known each other for over four decades, and Roldugin is the godfather to one of Putin’s daughters,” the department said in a statement.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg met with Biden on Thursday morning after the latest sanctions were announced and then briefed reporters on the White House driveway.
Stoltenberg hailed both the “unprecedented level of economic sanctions” against Russia, which helped send the country’s economy into steep decline, and the extent of US military aid to Ukraine.
“NATO also has a responsibility to prevent this war from escalating to become a full fledged-war between Russia and NATO that will cause even more death, even more destruction, even more damage,” Stoltenberg told reporters. “And that’s the reason why we made it clear that NATO is not party to the conflict … [but] we support Ukraine to defend itself.”
Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images
Biden on Tuesday confirmed plans to send powerful missiles to Ukraine as part of a new $700 million package to help defend eastern regions of the country, where Putin refocused his attack after failing to quickly capture capital city Kyiv.
The NATO secretary general said the US giving Ukraine powerful rockets would help “ensure that Ukraine remains as an independent sovereign democratic nation in Europe and that President Putin is halted from his aggressive actions.”
It remains unclear why Hunter Biden’s alleged Russian business associates — the billionaire oligarchs Yelena Baturina and Vladimir Yevtushenko — eluded the latest round of US sanctions against members of Russia’s business elite.
Baturina, whose wealth derives largely from construction, in 2014 paid a firm associated with Hunter Biden $3.5 million, according to a 2020 report written by Republican-led Senate committees. She is the widow of former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, and documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop indicate she may have attended a 2015 dinner in DC with then-Vice President Joe Biden.
Yevtushenkov, who owns a nearly 50% stake in Russian conglomerate Sistema — which has telecom, retail, banking, food and health interests — faces UK sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but hasn’t yet been targeted by the Biden administration. He met with Hunter Biden in 2012 at Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton hotel, but recently claimed they had no subsequent contact.
