JAKARTA - The United States targeted Russian banks and elites with a new round of sanctions on Wednesday, including barring Americans from investing in Russia, in response to what President Joe Biden denounced as major war crimes by Russian troops in Ukraine.
The new sanctions hit Russia's Sberbank, which holds a third of Russia's total banking assets, as well as Alfabank, the country's fourth-largest financial institution, US officials said. However, energy deals are excluded from the latest measures, they said.
The United States has also sanctioned the two adult daughters of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the wife and daughter of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and senior members of Russia's security council, officials said.
"There is nothing worse than a grave war crime," President Biden said in a speech to labor leaders, referring to the recaptured Ukrainian city of Bucha from Russian troops, where the bodies of civilians shot dead have been found. .
"Responsible countries must unite to hold these perpetrators accountable," he said.
"And together with our allies and partners, we will continue to increase the economic costs and increase the pain for Putin," President Biden said.
The grim images that have emerged of Bucha include mass graves and the bodies of people shot at close range, some of whom were tied up, prompting calls for tougher action against Moscow and an international investigation.
Russia, which says it launched a special military operation in Ukraine on February 24, denies targeting civilians and says the images of the deaths are "horrific fabrications" perpetrated by the West.
"Wednesday's full blocking sanctions will freeze Sberbank and Alfabank's assets from touching the US financial system," the White House said.
Britain also froze Sberbank assets, saying it would ban imports of Russian coal by the end of this year, as part of a coordinated allied effort to shut down Putin's war machine.
Meanwhile, Sberbank and Alfabank said the new sanctions would not have a significant impact on their operations.
Also among those hit by sanctions is Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's former president and former prime minister and one of Putin's closest allies. Others include Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Justice Minister Konstantin Chuychenko.
Later on Wednesday, President Biden signed an executive order prohibiting "new investments in the Russian Federation by persons of the United States, wherever located." These include venture capital and merger bans, officials said.
Separately, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy criticized some in the West and said he could not tolerate "any hesitation."
"The only thing we lack is a principled approach from some leaders, political leaders, business leaders, who still think that war and war crimes are not something as terrible as financial loss," he told Irish lawmakers.
This could not be separated from the failure of EU diplomats to agree to new sanctions on Wednesday, as technical issues needed to be addressed, including whether the coal ban would affect existing contracts, sources said.
It is known that Washington is targeting Putin's daughters because it believes many of their assets are hidden with family members, a senior Biden administration official said.
The youngest Katerina Vladimirovna Tikhonova is a technology executive whose job is to support the Russian government and its defense industry, according to details released by the US Treasury.
The eldest, Maria Vladimirovna Vorontsova, "leads a state-funded program that has received billions of dollars from the Kremlin for genetic research and is personally supervised by Putin," the Treasury said.
By cutting Russia's biggest banks, the United States is also "dramatically increasing" the financial shock in Russia, a senior government official told reporters.
Seeking to further increase pressure on Putin, the United States also imposed full-blown sanctions against what the White House called a "critical large Russian state-owned company." Those entities include United Aircraft and United Shipbuilding.
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