The Biden Administration has announced new sanctions targeting the two adult daughters of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
As reported by CNN, fresh new sanctions were announced on Wednesday, affecting financial institutions in Russia as well as individuals, including Putin's children, in response to the alleged civilian killings in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, northwest of Ukraine's capital of Kyiv.
Horrific images of atrocities in the town have laid additional pressure on the US and other Western nations to ramp up the economic pressure on Russia.
The US is targeting Putin's daughters, 36-year-old Mariya Putina and 35-year-old Katerina Tikhonova, as it is believed that the 69-year-old leader could be hiding some of his assets with the two women.
It was not revealed which of Putin's assets he could be hiding with them, but the practice is supposedly commonplace in elite circles in the Eastern European country.
A senior administration official told reporters, per CNN: "We have reason to believe that Putin and many of his cronies and the oligarchs hide their wealth, hide their assets, with family members that have placed their assets and their wealth in the US financial system, but also many other parts of the world.
"That's why the coordination, the coordinated efforts to freeze their assets and seize their physical luxury goods -- their cars, their yachts, their homes, etc. -- that's why it's so important that we act together."
The US is also imposing sanctions on the wife and daughter of Putin's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov.
"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 added.
Also targeted by the new sanctions is the Russian financial sector. Russian majority state-owned company Sberbank holds almost a third of the country's total banking sector assets, the official said, adding that the US has now fully blocked "more than two-thirds of the Russian banking sector."
The official also announced there would be a ban on new investment in Putin's nation, which is set to be executed in alignment with the G7 and EU. The ban will be put in place via an executive order signed by US President Joe Biden.
