UK sanctions Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's stepdaughter

Britain has sanctioned the stepdaughter of Russias Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as part of a new raft of sanctions on a string of Russian "oligarchs, businesses and hired thugs", Daily Mail reported.

Also among the targets of the new measures announced on Thursday are The Wagner Group mercenaries -- known as 'Putin's private army', and accused of trying to assassinate Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and other senior Ukrainian politicians.

The most prominent target of the sanctions is Imperial College graduate Polina Kovaleva, a glamorous 26-year-old who lives in a 4 million piund home in Kensington.

Polina's mother is reported to be Svetlana Polyakova, 51, a powerful member of the Russian Foreign Ministry, who accompanies Lavrov on every foreign trip and has had a relationship since the early 2000s. It is rumoured that she is Lavrov's 'unofficial' wife, Daily Mail reported.

Polina went to a private boarding school in Bristol before gaining a first-class degree in economics with politics at Loughborough University and later completing a masters in economics and strategy for business at the Imperial College London.

She went on to work for Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, where she helped with mergers and acquisitions, and later worked at Glencore, the mining company. Before buying her own home, she lived in Holland Park, west London, in an apartment in a townhouse that is owned by the Russian Embassy, Daily Mail reported.

Records show that the nearby Ukrainian Embassy alleged Russia had wrongly claimed ownership of the property.

--IANS

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