Following Russia’s inversion of Ukraine, Canada announced on Tuesday that it would place sanctions on 14 associates of the Russian government, including President Vladimir Putin’s two daughters. Mélanie Joly, Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that they would answer for their crimes.
“We will continue to impose severe costs on the Russian regime in coordination with our allies and will relentlessly pursue accountability for their actions,’’ Joly stated.
Putin’s daughters, Maria Putina and Katerina Tikhonova, have already felt the economic impact of the Russia-Ukraine war. Few details are known about the two since Putin has kept them out of public glare for security concerns. Their mother is Lyudmila Putina, who was married to the president before they ended their relationship in 2013.
Maria leads Russia’s state-funded programme that work on genetic programmes overseen by the Kremlin, while Katerina works on publicly funded projects at Moscow State University and oversees an artificial intelligence institute. The U.S. Treasury Department reports that Katerina also does work supporting the Russian defence industry.
It was not publicly known that Maria is 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. Katerina married Russian businessman Kirill Shamalov in 2013, but they divorced in 2018.
