Russian oligarch hit with sanctions 'trained with Vladimir Putin at elite KGB spy academy'

One of the Russian oligarchs placed under British sanctions on Tuesday trained with Vladimir Putin at the KGB’s elite spy academy, it has been claimed.

Gennady Timchenko, 69, described by Boris Johnson as one of the Russian president’s “cronies”, is now blacklisted by the UK Government for his involvement in “destabilising Ukraine” and threatening its sovereignty.

Mr Timchenko, Russia’s sixth wealthiest individual with a fortune estimated at £15 billion, allegedly studied with Mr Putin at the KGB’s Red Banner Academy, just outside Moscow, in the 1980s. Mr Timchenko, who plays ice hockey with Mr Putin, has previously dismissed the claims as a “fairy tale”.

The oligarch was one of three tycoons identified on Tuesday for immediate sanctions, along with five Russian banks. The two other businessmen were named as Boris Rotenberg, 65, a judo partner and childhood friend of Mr Putin, and his nephew Igor Rotenberg, whose father Arkady has been on the British banned list since Russia’s annexation of the Crimea in 2014.

According to Catherine Belton’s acclaimed book, Putin’s People, Mr Timchenko allegedly studied German with Mr Putin at the KGB academy before being posted to Vienna and Dresden respectively.

Both men returned to St Petersburg where Mr Putin, then a rising politician, granted an oil export licence to Mr Timchenko. In 2014, the US Obama administration placed Mr Timchenko under US sanctions as part of the “Russian leadership’s inner circle”.

Mr Johnson was criticised by MPs from across the political spectrum for failing to go far enough, by imposing sanctions on only three oligarchs.

But The Telegraph understands that further economic sanctions are being prepared against more individuals, as well as Russian companies working in the defence, energy and chemicals sectors.

The Russian government and Russian firms are also set to be locked out of debt markets in the UK, meaning it is tougher for them to raise money on UK capital markets.

The moves are an attempt to “ratchet up” pressure on Mr Putin and retain leverage to deter any further incursions from Russian troops in Ukraine.

In a statement to the House of Commons, Mr Johnson announced that five Russian banks - Rossiya, IS Bank, General Bank, Promsvyazbank and the Black Sea Bank - were being targeted, as well as the trio of “high net worth” individuals.

'We will hold further sanctions'

The Prime Minister said any assets the entities or individuals hold in the UK will be frozen. The individuals will be banned from travelling to the UK. All individuals and entities in the UK will also be prohibited from having any dealings with the targets of the sanctions.

Mr Johnson said: “This is the first tranche, the first barrage, of what we are prepared to do.

“We will hold further sanctions at readiness, to be deployed alongside the United States and the European Union if the situation escalates still further.”

It was later announced that members of the Russian Duma and Federation Council, who voted to recognise the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, will be sanctioned.

However, it could be weeks before those sanctions come into effect, given they need secondary legislation to be passed in Parliament before being implemented.

UK companies and individuals will also be barred from trading with the so-called breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk until they are returned to Ukrainian control.

The sanctions being prepared have been described as "unprecedented" and "wide-ranging" by the Foreign Office.

Individuals deemed to have "strategic significance and influence" on the Kremlin are among those to be targeted.

Earlier in his statement to the Commons, Mr Johnson said that Russian tanks and armoured personnel carriers had been spotted in the breakaway regions.

The Prime Minister said: “The House should be in no doubt that the deployment of these forces in sovereign Ukrainian territory amounts to a renewed invasion of that country.”

Mr Johnson said that Russia would become a “pariah” state if it continued down this path in Ukraine and dismissed Mr Putin's "absurd and even mystical reasons" to justify his actions.

Yet a string of MPs, including from Mr Johnson’s own Conservative Party, questioned whether the sanctions on individuals and companies went far enough.

Sir Keir Starmer said "a threshold has already been breached" as he called for firmer action now.

The Labour leader added: "If we do not respond with the full set of sanctions now, Putin will once again take away the message that the benefits of aggression outweigh the costs."

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, urged the UK to hit Russia "hard and hit them now", to increase the pain of the current incursion.

Crispin Blunt, the former Tory chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, said of Mr Putin: “He has already committed the crimes that deserve the most severe punishment from the free world.”

Chris Bryant, the Labour MP and former Foreign Office minister, tweeted:

Bill Browder, an Anglo-American financier, who has campaigned successfully for legislation enabling governments to sanction oligarchs deemed close to Mr Putin, pointed out that the three men blacklisted had been on US sanctions lists since 2018.

“If the objective was to give Putin a black eye this has done nothing of the sort,” said Mr Browder. “All the British Government has done is to bring this sanctions list partially to the level of the US list from four years ago. What we have done is laughable.”

Explaining why the UK had not gone further, the Prime Minister argued that allies were less willing to move quickly with tougher sanctions.

Mr Johnson told MPs: “I know the House wants us to hit Putin with absolutely everything that we have today.

"But I think what we want to do is to prioritise unity amongst the alliance and amongst our friends and work in lockstep with them. So there will be more to come.”

It remains unclear what exactly would trigger further sanctions, whether it is the refusal by Russia to withdraw troops from eastern Ukraine or a further incursion into territory controlled by Ukrainian soldiers.

British ministers and officials argued that holding back some sanctions could retain leverage to convince Mr Putin to not go further in Ukraine.

Speaking in the Commons, the Prime Minister threw his support behind calls to strip Russia of the right to hold the UEFA Champions League final in St Petersburg later this year.

Mr Johnson said: "I think it would be inconceivable that a major international football tournament could take place in Russia after the invasion of a sovereign country.”

Mr Johnson initially told the Commons that Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea Football Club owner, had previously been sanctioned.

But Downing Street made clear Mr Johnson would correct the record, as he had been referring to Mr Abramovich's 2018 visa expiration - not a previous economic sanction.

During the Commons address, Mr Johnson also voiced support for kicking Russia out of the Council of Europe, an organisation founded after the Second World War to uphold human rights and democracy in Europe.

But he declined to back Sir Keir’s call for Russia Today, the Russian state-owned television channel known as RT, to be banned from the UK.

Mr Johnson argued that it should be for Ofcom, the independent broadcast regulator, to decide which companies are allowed to operate.

On Tuesday, the National Cyber Security Centre - part of the GCHQ intelligence service, said there was a “heightened threat” of cyber attacks after Russian incursion in Ukraine.

It urged UK organisations “to bolster their online defences”.

Part of the statement read: “While the NCSC is not aware of any current specific threats to UK organisations in relation to events in and around Ukraine, there has been an historical pattern of cyber attacks on Ukraine with international consequences.”

Meanwhile Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, tweeted a link to a statement by the Stop The War organisation, which criticised the West over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

One line of the statement read: "The British Government has played a provocative role in the present crisis, talking up war, decrying diplomacy as appeasement and escalating arms supplies and military deployments to eastern Europe."

The White House listed three Russian elites who are coming under sanctions and said they would "share in the pain" inflicted on the Russian government. They are Sergey Kiriyenko, the First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Administration of Russia, and his son Vladimir; Alexander Bortnikov, the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB), and his son Dennis; and Petr Fradkov, CEO of Promsvyazbank.