Ukraine has seized $420 million in assets belonging to a sanctioned Russian oligarch

• Ukraine has seized $420 million in assets from Mikhail Fridman, the country's prosecutor general said.
• The prosecutor general's office said that it had seized securities in Cypriot companies held at a bank in Ukraine.

Ukraine has seized $420 million in assets from sanctioned Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman, according to Ukraine's prosecutor general.

The prosecutor general's office said in a press release Monday that it had seized securities in Cypriot companies worth more than 12.4 billion Ukrainian hryvnia ($419.7 million) held at a bank in Ukraine.

In a Facebook post, Iryna Venediktova, Ukraine's prosecutor general, named the bank as Alfa-Bank, which was founded by Fridman.

Alfa did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

The West has imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia in an attempt to cut off funding to its military and pressure President Vladimir Putin to end his invasion of Ukraine. As well as Russian banks, sanctions have targeted Russian elites and oligarchs, believed by some policymakers to have considerable influence over Putin.

The EU sanctioned Fridman alongside his business partner Petr Aven on February 28 and has also imposed sanctions on Alfa. The day after they were sanctioned, Fridman and Aven both resigned from the Moscow-based bank's board of directors, alongside two other members.

They also both left the board of London-based investment firm LetterOne, which Fridman had co-founded. The company's chairman told the Financial Times in March that employees weren't allowed to speak to Fridman and that he was locked out of its offices and blocked from accessing documents.

Fridman is worth around $10.9 billion, according to estimates by Bloomberg. The EU said Fridman was known as a "top Russian financier and enabler of Putin's inner circle."

Fridman has spoken out against Russia's invasion of Ukraine, calling it a "huge tragedy." He previously told Reuters that the EU's sanctions on him were "groundless and unfair" and that he would contest them.