Brussels: The United States announced Wednesday sanctions targetting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s two adult daughters. The US also said it was toughening penalties against Russian banks in retaliation for ‘war crimes’ in Ukraine.
The moves against Sberbank and Alfa Bank prohibit assets from touching the US financial system. It also bars Americans from doing business with those institutions.
In addition to sanctions aimed at Putin’s adult daughters, Mariya Putina and Katerina Tikhonova, the United States is targetting Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin; the wife and children of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and members of Russia’s Security Council, including Dmitry Medvedev, a former president and prime minister.
The penalties cut of all of Putin’s close family members off from the US financial system. The sanctions will freeze any assets they hold in the United States.
In recent times, Russia has faced heavy criticisms for the civilian killings in Ukraine’s Bucha. Since then there has been a call for imposing more sanctions on Russia in retaliation to the war crimes. Many bodies of civilians with their hands tied their backs in Bucha.
President Joe Biden called the latest round of sanctions ‘devastating’. “I made clear that Russia would pay a severe and immediate price for its atrocities in Bucha,” Biden said in a tweet.
Biden was expected to will sign an executive order that would ban new investments in Russia by Americans no matter where they are living. The US Treasury Department is preparing more sanctions against major Russian state-owned enterprises, according to the White House.
Videos and images of bodies in the streets of Bucha after it was recaptured from Russian forces have unleashed a wave of indignation among Western allies, who have drawn up new sanctions as a response.
The European Commission’s proposed ban on coal imports would be the first EU sanctions targetting Russia’s lucrative energy industry over its war in Ukraine.
EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell said energy was key to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war coffers. “A billion euro is what we pay Putin every day for the energy he provides us since the beginning of the war. We have given him 35 billion euro. Compare that to the one billion that we have given to the Ukraine in arms and weapons,” Borrell said.