U.S. imposes sanctions on Sberbank, Alfa-Bank, Putin’s daughters

The United States is announcing economic measures to ban new investment in Russia and imposing new financial sanctions on Russia’s largest bank and several of its major state-owned enterprises and on Russian government officials and their family members.

An official representative of the U.S. administration announced this on Wednesday, an Ukrinform correspondent reported.

“Today we’re dramatically escalating the financial shock by imposing full blocking sanctions on Russia’s largest financial institution, Sberbank, and its largest private bank, Alfa Bank,” the official representative said. 

According to him, in this way the United States has completely blocked more than two thirds of Russia's banking sector. The United States also intends to completely block important Russian state-owned enterprises, a list of which will be officially announced later. In addition, the official noted that the Department of Treasury has blocked Russia from making debt payments with dollars stockpiled at US banks. 

In addition, the administration is introducing individual sanctions on a new set of Russian elites and their family members, including Putin’s adult daughters Mariya Putina and Katerina Tikhonova, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s wife and daughter and members of Russia’s Security Council, including former President and Prime Minister of Russia Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin.

The United States, in cooperation with the G7 and the EU, is also announcing a ban on new investments in Russia. As expected, that will be implemented with an executive order signed by U.S. President Joe Biden.