U.S. imposes sanctions on Alina Kabaeva, Putin’s rumored girlfriend

The U.S. announcement Tuesday cited Kabaeva’s “close partnership to Putin,” nevertheless it did not position to a passionate tie especially. But the U.S. authorities holds that Kabaeva is the mother of at minimum three of Putin’s small children, the Wall Street Journal described, and experienced earlier organized a sanctions offer towards her just before producing a final-minute selection in late April to hold off to stay away from hurting prospects for a negotiated peace in Ukraine.

Kabaeva has also served as a lawmaker for Putin’s social gathering in the Condition Duma and currently heads the pro-Kremlin Countrywide Media Group, which operates a community of Tv set and radio stations and publishes newspapers in Russia. Kabaeva was by now beneath E.U. and U.K. sanctions.

“As innocent persons endure from Russia’s unlawful war of aggression, Putin’s allies have enriched them selves and funded opulent lifestyles,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said in a information launch. “The Treasury Section will use every tool at our disposal to make sure that Russian elites and the Kremlin’s enablers are held accountable for their complicity in a war that has price tag countless life.”

Kabaeva, who was born in Uzbekistan in 1983, rose to prominence in Russia as a person of rhythmic gymnastics’ most embellished athletes. Her athletic profession was not with out controversy, though — she experienced to return two medals from the 2001 Goodwill Games immediately after a doping scandal.

Kabaeva retired from the sport all-around the exact same time studies emerged that she was romantically joined with Putin.

The Kremlin has denied the alleged marriage. A Russian newspaper that released an report in 2008 stating Putin and Kabaeva ended up romantically involved was swiftly shut down under mysterious instances.

Putin and his spouse of 30 a long time, Lyudmila Putina, divorced in 2014.

Kabaeva and her spouse and children have benefited handsomely from connections to Putin’s circle, according to Russian and U.S. media stories. A categorized U.S. intelligence assessment of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election listed Kabaeva as a beneficiary of Putin’s wealth, the Journal described in April, citing a U.S. formal.

The lavish lifestyles of Putin’s described girlfriends have fueled speculation about their relationships with the Russian president. The Pandora Papers, a trove of files uncovered by The Washington Publish and a consortium of news organizations last 12 months, confirmed that yet another lady who was reportedly romantically involved with Putin owned a fancy condominium in Monaco and a shell organization in the British Virgin Islands — even as it was unclear how she experienced amassed so considerably wealth.

Kabaeva was spotted publicly for the initial time in months in late April, when she led her once-a-year “Alina Pageant,” a patriotic rhythmic gymnastics competition in Moscow. She stood in front of a backdrop decorated with the letter Z, the state’s image for its invasion of Ukraine.

The United States previously imposed sanctions on Putin’s daughters from a former marriage, Katerina Tikhonova and Maria Vorontsova, soon after evidence emerged of alleged war crimes dedicated by Russian forces in the course of their occupation of the suburbs of Kyiv, the Ukrainian funds. The atrocities included the beheading and torture of civilians.

The most recent sanctions are aimed at Russian elites and businesses running in sectors “that generate considerable revenue for the Russian routine,” the announcement claimed.

In addition to Kabaeva, they involve Andrey Grigoryevich Guryev, founder of a Russian chemical corporation and operator of London’s second-premier estate after Buckingham Palace, and Viktor Filippovich Rashnikov, the the greater part owner and board chair of MMK, a single of the world’s most significant metal producers. Two MMK subsidiaries ended up also placed less than sanctions.

The sanctions freeze the U.S. assets of these qualified and ban U.S. men and women or entities from transacting with them.

The Condition Section, meanwhile, announced new sanctions on three Russian oligarchs and Kremlin-backed officials in places of Ukraine occupied by Russian or proxy forces, like Mariupol and Kherson. The sanctions also target 24 Russian defense and technological innovation-associated entities, together with study facilities.

“Our steps goal some of Russia’s most essential protection-linked research and advancement establishments, semiconductor producers, and advanced computing and electronics entities,” Secretary of Point out Antony Blinken explained in a assertion. “These actions will even more isolate Russia’s protection and superior-know-how industries and limit their contributions to Moscow’s war equipment.”

The division also imposed visa constraints on almost 900 Russian officers as properly as “31 overseas authorities officers who have acted to assistance Russia’s purported annexation of the Crimea location of Ukraine and thereby threatened or violated Ukraine’s sovereignty.”

Canada also unveiled a new spherical of sanctions Tuesday, concentrating on 43 armed forces officers and 17 entities “that are complicit in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s senseless bloodshed” such as atrocities in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, according to the announcement from World-wide Affairs Canada.