The announcement Wednesday of “full foreclosure sanctions” that prevent lenders from doing business with US institutions or individuals came after US top officials, including US President Joe Biden, warned this week that they were planning to impose tougher sanctions. restrictions in Russia. A senior US official said the latest measures came in response to “disgusting barbarism in Bhutan”, a city near the capital Kyiv, where horrific images of the bodies of Ukrainian civilians have been uncovered in recent days, suggesting a possible massacre by Russian soldiers. “The Treasury Department has committed itself to holding Russia accountable for its actions so that it can not benefit from the international financial system,” US Treasury Secretary Janet Glenn told a congressional hearing on Wednesday. The United States has also imposed sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s two adult daughters, Ekaterina Tikhonova and Maria Vorontsova. the wife and daughter of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov; and members of Russia’s Security Council, including former President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Mikhail Misustin. In addition, the United States has said it will ban any new US investment in Russia and reveal new sanctions on major Russian state-owned companies on Thursday. Immediately after the invasion, the US banned any debt or equity transactions with Alfa and Sberbank, but the new “full foreclosure sanctions” impose much stricter restrictions. “This is the toughest action we can take on financial measures,” he said. “And in practice, the history of sanctions is when we impose sanctions of complete exclusion [a] financial institution, in the rest of the world, and even in other jurisdictions that have not yet imposed a complete blockade, respect the regime. So there tends to be a multiplier effect. “ The official added that the US and the EU chose to target Putin’s daughters because they believed they were helping to protect the Russian president’s wealth. “We believe that many of Putin’s assets are hidden from family members and that is why we are targeting them,” he said. The UK government also announced on Wednesday additional sanctions against Putin’s regime, including a full asset freeze against Sberbank. The measures, which British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said marked “the toughest sanctions to date”, included a ban on imports of Russian steel products along with a complete ban on new investment in Russia. The United Kingdom has also imposed sanctions on eight other people linked to key Russian industries, including Andrey Akimov, CEO of Gazprombank, and Leonid Mikhelson, founder and CEO of Novatek.

The U.S. and European allies hoped that the initial outbreak of heavy sanctions imposed after the Russian invasion in late February, including cutting off Moscow access to its foreign exchange reserves by banning trading with its central bank, would be enough to isolate Russia financially. without causing too much impact on the rest of the world economy. But as the conflict continued, they were forced to consider additional targets, expanding the network to include companies and individuals in third countries that continue to trade with Russian entities and tightening existing sanctions. Edward Fisman, the former head of sanctions at Russia and Europe at the Foreign Ministry, described Wednesday’s measures as “the most important sanctions ever taken by [Russian] central bank sanctions ”imposed in late February. “We are heading for Iran-type sanctions,” he said, referring to decades of anti-Tehran measures that began in 1979. “This is a conveyor belt and it only points in one direction.” Despite the new sanctions, some US lawmakers criticized the Biden administration for not doing enough, noting that the package did not impose tougher sanctions on some oligarchs and still included exemptions for Russian energy. David Scott, a Democrat on the House Finance Committee, told Yellen that the Treasury Department’s decision to issue a special permit for Alisher Usmanov – an oligarch he described as Putin’s “favorite” – that allowed him to continue doing business became “black”. sign “in the nation. “Our reputation as world leaders is at stake when such things happen and there is no explanation for it,” Scott said. When asked by Patrick McHenry, the Republicans’ top representative on the House Financial Services Committee, why Russia was still making “hundreds of millions of dollars every day in hard currency” through oil and gas exports, Yellen acknowledged that were limited. “Unfortunately, many of our European partners are still heavily dependent on Russian gas as well as oil, and are committed to moving away from that dependency as quickly as possible,” he said. However, Yellen said the United States was ready to impose sanctions even more broadly, including on China, if it attacked Taiwan. “We are concerned about Taiwan and we will act accordingly,” he said. “In the case of Russia, we have threatened with significant consequences, we have imposed significant consequences, and I think you should not doubt our ability and determination to do the same in other situations.”