 Businessman Yevgeniy Prigozhin serves food to Vladimir Putin during dinner at Prigozhin's restaurant outside Moscow in November 2011. (Misha Japaridze/AP) | In the amped-up war of words between Washington and Moscow, President Biden has leveled what appears to be a next-level threat: If Russian troops defy the West and surge into Ukraine, the United States could slap personal sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin. An increasingly common U.S. tactic, individual sanctions can ban travel and freeze assets in U.S. jurisdictions and bar Americans and U.S. companies from transactions with designees, targeting everything from New York bank accounts to family trips to Disney World. They can also have global reach through foreign banks and companies that fear running afoul of U.S. law. Pushing back against Biden's threat, Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said direct action against Putin would be "politically destructive" to U.S.-Russian ties — but not "painful" for his boss. He might be right. Broader U.S. sanctions against Russia could indeed sting. The New York Times reported that U.S. officials are prepared to take a "sledgehammer" to Russia's financial system by targeting state banks and cutting off foreign lending, sales of sovereign bonds and technologies for critical industries, among other steps. Sanctions on that scale aimed at a country the size of Russia are novel and risk disruptions to the global financial system as well as Russian retaliation. European allies, dependent on Russian energy to light Berlin, Paris and Rome, may also be reluctant to join in. But if fully imposed, such sanctions could serve as serious punishment for Russian transgression. Sanctions targeting Putin himself might be more difficult to make count. For one, to even consider freezing his assets, you'd have to know where they are. And Putin has buried his wealth better than any James Bond villain. "Putin doesn't have an account at JPMorgan Chase," Eugene Rumer, a Russian expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me. "There's a lot of talk about him being the richest man in the world with a fortune in the hundreds of billions of dollars. But I've never seen any credible proof of that fortune, or where he keeps it. And I don't think Putin was planning on buying a condo for retirement in Sunny Isles, Florida." Forbes recently described Putin's alleged fortune as "probably the most elusive riddle in wealth hunting — harder than the heirs, other heads of state and even drug lords that we've financially smoked out over the years." Theories run the gambit: That he's built an empire by demanding cuts from Russian oligarchs, or illicit financial deals or contract kickbacks. But they're all just theories. Meanwhile, his stated assets are relatively meager. Bloomberg News reported that a Kremlin declaration of Putin's earnings claims his income to be roughly $131,000 a year. His declared assets? "A 77-square-meter apartment, an 18-square-meter garage, two vintage Volga GAZ M21 cars, a Lada Niva SUV and a trailer" — all of them in Russia and out of U.S. reach. "The reality is that there are probably few people other than Putin who know how much loot he has and where he keeps it," wrote Bloomberg News's Timothy L. O'Brien. "That will make it difficult to figure out which financial switch to flip to deter Russia from invading Ukraine, or to penalize Putin personally if it does." One of the more outlandish possibilities: That Putin actually isn't as rich as one might think because his awesome powers at home don't require a fortune to rule. "In the end, Putin may not need money, so long as he has the appearance of having it and the power that it would otherwise confer," Forbes Wealth Team mused. Few believe governments — even U.S. allies — that do business with Russia would agree to steps that turn Putin into a global pariah barred from summits or business events. "The Europeans are not going to stop him from coming, and the Chinese will welcome him with open arms, so I'm not sure how a travel ban could work," Rumer said. "Putin is not the kind of leader who goes to Disneyland. If he wanted to, he'd just have one built in Moscow." It's relatively rare for the United States to impose sanctions on a sitting head of state, but it's happened before — including 1,300 miles off the coast of Florida where Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro goes to bed at night as the sitting global leader perhaps most targeted by Washington's wrath. In 2017, the U.S. government added Maduro to a list of high-ranking Venezuelan officials who faced asset freezes and bans on U.S. citizens doing business with them. Since then, federal authorities in Florida have seized from Venezuelan officials and government-linked business executives more than $450 million in assets — including Miami condos, superyachts and show horses. "But they didn't seem to find any of Maduro personal assets," Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela expert at the Washington Office on Latin America, told me. A further step not seen as an imminent possibility with Putin hurt Maduro more: His indictment in 2020 by the U.S. Justice Department on narcoterrorism charges, including a $15 million bounty for information leading to his capture. Since then, Maduro's rare official foreign trips have been confined to friendly nations including Cuba and Mexico. The White House on Monday signaled what could be a more likely — and damaging — play than going directly after Putin: Targeting figures "in or near the inner circle of the Kremlin." That could include barring children of certain Russian elites from attending prestigious universities in the United States and Europe, the New York Times reported. The targeted Russians could be closer to Putin than those slapped with U.S. sanctions in the past, and reportedly could include Alina Kabaeva, a former Olympic gymnast alleged to have been romantically involved with the Russian leader. The United States and Europe have already placed sanctions on more than 800 Russian individuals over Russian aggression, including the annexation of Crimea, attempted assassinations of dissidents and disruptions of U.S. elections. A Post report in October illustrated how those sanctions triggered losses that spread across their interconnected financial networks. The theory: To get to Putin, you make the rich people close to him uncomfortable — striking personal blows to their business affairs and lavish lifestyles. There is little question such sanctions hurt. But when it comes to compelling those leaders to change course, or, in the most extreme cases, provoking regime change, individual sanctions sometimes have limited purpose. For instance, the targeting of Maduro's inner circle has not worked. Sure, they're unhappy: I have sat in Caracas with U.S.-sanctioned individuals close to and within the Maduro government. They bitterly complained about their shrinking worlds, and the personal price they've paid because of U.S. sanctions. But in recent years, only one senior Venezuelan official close to Maduro and sanctioned by the United States has actually defected, and Maduro's grip on power is tighter now than ever. And Putin commands far more formidable powers of persuasion than the Venezuelan leader. In fact, some argue that cutting key figures in authoritarian regimes off from the West can make them even more reliant on the authoritarians they serve. "I think for those on the individual sanctions list, it's an annoyance," Ramsey said. "But it can also create incentives that can be counterproductive. | 
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