American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Hal Brands discusses Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision making as tensions escalate in the Ukraine.
President Biden on Tuesday authorized further sanctions against Russia in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The sanctions take aim at two of the Kremlin’s major state-owned banks that are critical to financing Russia’s defense industry. They also target five Kremlin-connected elites.
President Biden speaks about Ukraine in the East Room of the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 22, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
The action, from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) builds on the president’s executive order imposing restrictions on economic activity in the so-called DNR and LNR regions of Ukraine.
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The U.S. Treasury Department said these “elites” have leveraged their proximity to Putin to “pillage the Russian state, enrich themselves, and elevate their family members into some of the highest positions of power in the country at the expense of the Russian people.”
The sanctioned individuals, according to the Treasury Department, have used family members to control their immense wealth.
Who are the Russian oligarchs being sanctioned?
Aleksandr Vasilievich Bortnikov
Aleksandr Vasilievich Bortnikov is the Director of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), considered the country’s successor to the KGB, and is a permanent member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation.
Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Aleksandr Bortnikov speaks during the Moscow Conference on International Security (MCIS) in Moscow, Russia. (Evgeny Biyatov / Sputnik via AP)
He was previously designated in March 2021 for being a Russian government official and for working with the FSB.
Denis Aleksandrovich Bortnikov
Aleksandr Bortnikov’s son, Denis Aleksandrovich Bortnikov, is currently a deputy president of the state-owned financial institution, VTB Bank Public Joint Stock Company (VTB Bank), and a chairman of the VTB Bank Management Board.
VTB Bank Deputy President Denis Bortnikov at a ceremony to lay the foundation stone for a fuelling facility at St Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport. (Photo by Alexander DemianchukTASS via Getty Images)
He is also reported to have ties with other authoritarian regimes such as Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan.
Petr Mikhailovich Fradkov
Petr Mikhailovich Fradkov is the chairman and CEO of the Promsvyazbank Public Joint Stock Company (PSB), one of those banks targeted by U.S. sanctions. He is also the son of Mikhail Efimovich Fradkov, who is the former Russian Prime Minister and former director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) – Russia’s equivalent of the CIA.
For the past several years, he has worked to transform PSB into a bank that services the defense industry and supports state defense contracts.
The CEO of the Russian Export Center, Pyotr Fradkov. (Photo by Yekaterina ShtukinaTASS via Getty Images)
As chairman and CEO of PSB, Fradkov has had held working meetings with Putin and participated in roundtable discussions in international forums.
Fradkov is also the General Director of Joint Stock Company Russian Export, a subsidiary of the second financial institution targeted in U.S. sanctions: the State Corporation Bank for Development and Foreign Economic Affairs Vnesheconombank (VEB).
Sergei Vladilenovich Kiriyenko
Sergei Vladilenovich Kiriyenko is the former Prime Minister of Russia and served as the General Director of Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation. He had the distinction of being the youngest person to assume the post of Prime Minister of Russia at the age of 35.
First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Russian Presidential Executive Office Sergei Kiriyenko attends a meeting at the Russian Government House on preparation of President Vladimir Putin’s annual address to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. (Photo by Dmitry AstakhovTASS via Getty Images)
Kiriyenko is now the First Deputy Chief of Staff on the Presidential Office where he works closely with Putin as his domestic policy curator.
Vladimir Sergeevich Kiriyenko
Sergei Vladilenovich Kiriyenko’s son, Vladimir Sergeevich Kiriyenko, previously worked at the Russian-state controlled company Rostelecom, and is presently the CEO of VK Group, the parent company of Russia’s top social media platform, VKontakte.
On Monday, Putin deployed troops into two separatist regions of Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk, located in the Eastern part of the country in an area named Donbas. The Russian president called the action a peacekeeping mission, and recognized the two regions as independent.
A military vehicle drives on a road as smoke rises from a power plant after shelling outside the town of Schastia, near the eastern Ukraine city of Lugansk, on February 22, 2022, a day after Russia recognised east Ukraine’s separatist republics and o (ARIS MESSINIS/AFP via Getty Images)
Following the invasion, Biden issued an executive order prohibiting Americans from doing business with Donetsk and Luhansk. The president has also allowed sanctions to move forward against the company that built the Russia-to-Germany Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and against the company’s CEO.
The threat of war has shredded Ukraine’s economy and raised the specter of massive casualties, energy shortages across Europe and global economic chaos.
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Even as the conflict took a new, dangerous turn, leaders warned it could still get worse. Putin has yet to unleash the force of the 150,000 troops massed on three sides of Ukraine, while President Biden held back on even tougher sanctions that could cause economic turmoil for Russia but said they would go ahead if Putin’s troops moved deeper into Ukraine.
Fox Business Breck Dumas contributed to this report.
