Canada imposing sanctions on Putin’s daughters

Canada announced Tuesday it will place sanctions on 14 associates of the Russian government, including President Vladimir Putin’s two daughters. 

“We will continue to impose severe costs on the Russian regime in coordination with our allies and will relentlessly pursue accountability for their actions,” Mélanie Joly, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs, said in a statement Tuesday. “They will answer for their crimes.”

Putin’s daughters — Maria Putina and Katerina Tikhonova — have already felt the economic impact of the Russia-Ukraine war. The Biden administration placed sanctions on the rarely seen women in early April. 

Few details are known of the two since Putin has kept them out of the public eye for security concerns. Their mother is Lyudmila Putina, who was married to the Russian president before they ended their relationship in 2013.

Reuters reported that Maria Putina leads Russia state-funded programs that work on genetic programs overseen by the Kremlin. Tikhonova works on publicly funded projects at Moscow State University and oversees an artificial intelligence institute. The U.S. Treasury Department reported she also does work supporting the Russian defense industry. 

It wasn’t publicly known that Putina was Putin’s daughter until 2015, when blogger Oleg Kashin published the news, considering her surname is from her grandmother. 

She is reportedly married to Dutch businessman Jorrit Joost Faassen. Tikhonova married Russian businessman Kirill Shamalov in 2013, but they divorced in 2018. 

Canada also sanctioned the wife of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. 

The U.S. has targeted family members of other prominent Russian oligarchs. In March, the U.S. placed sanctions on Russian oligarch Gennady Timchenko along with his wife and two daughters, among other families.