The White House announces plans to impose sanctions on Vladimir Putin and his top aide.

• The U.S. will impose individual sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, in response to similar sanctions announced by the U.K. and the European Union.
• Russia's invasion of Ukraine has led to the imposition of sanctions on Putin and Lavrov, the highest-ranking officials in the United States.
• The effectiveness of imposing individual sanctions on Putin is uncertain, as he publicly states that his salary of approximately $140,000 is his sole source of income.

The White House declared on Friday that the United States will impose sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

Earlier in the day, the European Union and the United Kingdom declared identical sanctions.

In response to Russia's actions in Ukraine, the U.S. has added Putin and Lavrov to a growing list of elite Russian government officials who have been sanctioned.

This week, the United States has declared new sanctions against Russia's major banks and its sovereign debt, disconnecting them from the U.S. financial system.

On Wednesday, Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, deploying tens of thousands of troops into various Ukrainian cities, with the apparent objective of seizing Kyiv.

The Biden administration stated that the threat of severe sanctions prior to the invasion was meant to discourage Putin.

Since the strategy failed this week, the White House has shifted its message to emphasize the punitive consequences of sanctions.

The effectiveness of imposing individual sanctions on Putin is uncertain.

Putin publicly states that his salary of approximately $140,000 is his sole source of income and discloses his assets as two apartments and several vehicles.

Putin resides in a grand residence larger than Buckingham Palace and is frequently seen wearing expensive watches worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

According to experts and former Kremlin insiders, Putin is believed to be worth billions of dollars and employs the global shadow banking system to conceal his funds.

Putin is believed to have control over assets in Europe, as per the Pandora Papers investigation published in October 2021. The leaked documents showed a $4.1 million apartment in Monaco owned by a Russian woman with no discernible source of income but who had been romantically linked to Putin for years.

In 2010, Svetlana Krivonogikh was listed as the registered owner of a shell company that was a major shareholder in a Russian state-linked bank sanctioned by the United States in 2014.

Ukrainian diplomats in the United States will be pleased to hear about the sanctions against Putin.

Oksana Markarova, Ukraine's Ambassador to the United States, stated on Friday that imposing sanctions on Putin is the appropriate course of action.

The former minister of finance, Markarova, welcomed the European Union's decision to sanction Putin and Lavrov.

The Biden administration announced sanctions on Thursday, and Kyiv expressed gratitude, according to Markarova.

She expressed her happiness to reporters at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington on Friday about the sanctions against major Russian banks, their export controls, and the personal sanctions.