The Biden administration announced a slew of new sanctions aimed at punishing Russia for its invasion of Ukraine on Thursday, with targets including several yachts linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin, an oligarch who controls a major steel producer, and a cellist who the administration claims acts as a go-between for the Russian leader.
Since the February 24 invasion, the United States and other Western countries have imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia’s economy, including the country’s central bank and major financial institutions.
President Joe Biden stated in his State of the Union address in March that the US would work to seize the yachts, luxury apartments, and private jets of wealthy Russians with ties to Putin.
The US Treasury Department named two vessels, the Russian-flagged Graceful and the Cayman Islands-flagged Olympia, as properties in which Putin has an interest on Thursday. According to the Treasury, the Russian president, who was blacklisted the day after his February 24 invasion of Ukraine, has taken numerous trips on yachts, including one in the Black Sea with Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko last year.
It also identified two other yachts it said were used by Putin and owned by a sanctioned Russian company.
The Treasury also targeted Imperial Yachts, a brokerage based in Monaco that allows superyacht owners, including Russian oligarchs, to charter their boats when they are not using them, as well as an aviation company it said was involved in a scheme to transfer aircraft to an offshore company to avoid sanctions.
The Biden administration also added Sergei Roldugin, a cellist and conductor already under European Union sanctions for his links to Putin, to its list of sanctioned individuals. The order froze his U.S. assets and barred U.S. people from dealing with them.
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