RUSSIA: A “mythic” couple under EU sanctions since 2014 and 2022 respectively
Birds of a feather flock together
By Willy Fautré, director of Human Rights Without Frontiers.
Last year, a high-society event in Moscow went unnoticed in Western Europe: the wedding of Konstantin Malofeev and Maria Lvova-Belova in an elite venue of Deauville, near Moscow on 8 September 2024. More than a hundred people attended the event.
Both claim to embody the traditional Christian values. Konstantin Malofeev’s divorce from his previous wife, a lawyer, became known in 2023. They had three children. As to Maria Lvova-Belova, she divorced from Pavel Kogelman who had become a priest in 2019. Together they had raised 10 biological and adopted children.
The newlyweds are supporters of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and are under sanctions of the European Union and the United States. “Orthodox oligarch” Malofeev under EU sanctions since 2014
Since 30 July 2014, “Orthodox oligarch” Konstantin Valerevich Malofeev has been placed on the EU sanctions list under Council Regulation (EU) No 269/2014 as part of restrictive measures related to actions undermining Ukraine’s territorial integrity. He was then accused of financing the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, and the media under his control became one of the main distributors of Russian propaganda.
He has since then been personally subject to an asset freeze. It means that all funds and economic resources belonging to, owned, held or controlled by him have since then been frozen and EU persons and entities are prohibited from making funds available to him. Member States are primarily responsible for the implementation of EU sanctions.
He was closely linked to Ukrainian separatists in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, providing weapons, material and financial support. He also made public statements supporting the annexation of Crimea and the Donbas. Through his actions and declarations, he is considered to have supported the destabilization of Eastern Ukraine.
In the same year, he was also put under U.S. sanctions. All of his property and assets that came within U.S. jurisdiction were blocked, with U.S. persons generally prohibited from dealing with him.
Malofeev’s Tsargrad TV Channel under EU sanctions in 2023
On 18 December 2023, the Council of the European Union imposed restrictive measures on Tsargrad TV Channel (Царьград ТВ) belonging to and financed by Konstantin Malofeev, as part of the 12th Package of Sanctions targeting an additional group of 61 individuals and 86 entities in Russia responsible for actions undermining or threatening the territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence of Ukraine. On that occasion, the SPAS TV Channel of the Russian Orthodox Church was also put under EU sanctions.
Tsargrad TV Channel was created in 2015 by Malofeev. In 2020, Tsargrad TV was blocked on You Tube due to violation of sanctions legislation and trade rules, as reported by Ukrainska Pravda. Before that ban, Tsargrad TV had 1.06 million subscribers.
Tsargrad TV is a “megaphone” of the propaganda of the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church in the spheres of Russia’s domestic and foreign policy, geopolitics, international relations, culture, traditions, and religion.
Tsargrad TV channel also became known for its harsh, and sometimes insulting, statements against other religions in the Russian Federation, in unison with the state policy of restricting the freedoms of non-Orthodox religions and their members.
The channel’s coverage “worship[s] Putin as the second coming of Christ,” according to Irene Kenyon, a former senior intelligence officer at the U.S. Treasury Department.
In 2022, Washington expanded sanctions against Malofeev’s “malign influence network,” which includeD over 40 individuals and entities like the pro-Kremlin Orthodox television channel Tsargrad.
According to the OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project), John Hanick – a former Fox News producer who “worked in support” of Malofeev from roughly 2013 through 2017 and helped Malofeev set up Tsargrad TV – was charged with violating sanctions and faces a maximum prison sentence of 25 years.
Hanick is accused of helping Malofeev “establish and develop media outlets in Russia, Greece, Bulgaria and elsewhere” and providing “funds, goods, and services to and for the benefit” of the mogul and his companies, according to the indictment.
Malofeev faces an even steeper sentence but is unlikely to be extradited under Trump’s presidency, though a U.S. judge ordered $5.5 million of his assets seized in 2023.
Maria Lvova-Belova, the Commissioner for Children’s Rights in Russia
Lvova-Belova has been in that position since 2021. Before that, she was a senator from the Penza region.
She is under sanctions of the US, the UK and the EU for transferring forcefully and illegally thousands of Ukrainian children from the occupied territories of Ukraine to Russia, and putting up a number of them publicly for adoption.
On 17 March 2023, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population and unlawful transfer of population from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, in prejudice of Ukrainian children.
On 3 December 2025, the UN General Assembly adopted a nonbinding resolution demanding that Russia ensure the immediate, safe and unconditional return of all Ukrainian children it has unlawfully transferred or deported during the war, after a vote that saw 91 countries in favor, 12 against and 57 abstentions, according to Detector Media
Adopted at the Assembly’s 11th emergency special session on Ukraine, the text “demands that the Russian Federation ensure the immediate, safe and unconditional return of all Ukrainian children who have been forcibly transferred or deported.”
On the eve of the session of the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva in January 2024, Human Rights Without Frontiers published a report recalling that almost two years after the start of the war only a few hundred Ukrainian children had been rescued in various separate and individually designed special operations, according to The platform “Children of War” created on behalf of the Office of the President of Ukraine by various official Ukrainian institutions.
The platform has posted the pictures, names and dates of birth with the place of disappearance of about 20,000 missing children.
It is however impossible to establish the exact number of deported children given the ongoing full-scale aggression, difficult access to the temporarily occupied territories and the failure of the Russian side to provide reliable information on this matter.
On 31 July 2023, Radio Svoboda wrote “Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russia has “accepted” about 4.8 million residents of Ukraine, more than 700 thousand of them children, according to the report of the Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova. According to the ombudsman, most Ukrainian children came to Russia with their parents or other relatives.”
In its 2023 report on the issue, the OSCE notes that the Russian authorities began working on the “transfer” of Ukrainian children for adoption or care by Russian families since 2014, after the occupation of Crimea.
According to the Russian program “Train of Hope“, anyone from any part of the country could adopt Ukrainian children from Crimea, who were then granted Russian citizenship.
At the end of September 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on the “accession” to the Russian Federation of the partially occupied regions of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and the occupied region of Luhansk in Ukraine. After that, children from these newly occupied regions also began to be enrolled as citizens of the Russian Federation and forcefully adopted.
The fate of at least 20,000 children deported from the occupied territories of Ukraine should remain high on the agenda of any ceasefire or peace negotiations.
Human Rights Without Frontiers raised this issue again at the recent conference “Resilient Europe: Countering Russian Propaganda and Disinformation Forum” at the European Economic and Social Committee in Brussels on 17-18 December 2025.
