“The United States, in coordination with allies and partners, is targeting more members of the Russian elite and their families who continue to support Putin in the Ukraine war,” the White House said in a statement.
The sanctions include Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, 19 Russian businessmen and 47 members of their families.
Last week, Washington imposed sanctions on Russian businessmen and those close to the Kremlin, up to President Vladimir Putin personally, freezing their potential assets in the United States.
The European Union included new names of oligarchs on its own list.
The new US sanctions will allow the adoption of the same European list with the addition of a ban on entering US territory and measures that prevent these oligarchs from transferring their assets to members of their families, in addition to preventing them from entering US territory, according to Agence France-Presse, which quoted this information from an informed source.
The European Union imposed sanctions, in particular on Igor Sechin, head of the Rosneft group, one of the largest producers of crude oil in the world, and on Nikolai Tokarev, chairman of the Board of Directors of Transneft, another large group in the oil and gas sector.
The Europeans also targeted Alisher Usmanov, a businessman close to the Russian president, bankers Peter Olegovich Avin and Mikhail Fridman, founder and shareholder of “Alpha Group”, as well as Peter Fradkov, head of “Promsvyazbank”.
European sanctions included other close associates of President Putin, businessman Gennady Timchenko, the billionaire co-founder of the raw materials trading company “Gunvor”, steel magnate Alexei Mordashov and owner of the Severstal mining group, and cellist Sergei Pavlovich Roldugin.
This new US package of sanctions comes at a time when many of these financiers are under pressure or are starting to distance themselves from Putin’s war in Ukraine.