The United States on Wednesday rolled out a fresh round of sanctions against Russia over its continuing invasion of Ukraine, targeting key Russian banks, President Vladimir Putin's two daughters and a ban on new investment in Russia.

The move was taken in coordination with the Group of Seven industrialized nations, the U.S. administration of President Joe Biden said, as global condemnation is growing over the killings of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha following the withdrawal of Russian troops from the area.

Calling the situation in Bucha as "nothing less happening than major war crimes," Biden said, "Together with our allies and our partners, we're going to keep raising the economic cost and ratchet up the pain for Putin and further increase Russia's economic isolation."

As part of the latest actions, Biden signed an executive order that prohibits new investment in Russia by U.S. persons regardless of where they are located.

Russia's largest financial institution, Sberbank, and the country's largest private bank, Alfa Bank, will also have their assets frozen in the United States, and U.S. persons will be prohibited from doing business with them.

Sberbank, which is majority-owned by the Russian government, has already been prohibited from undertaking transactions with U.S. financial institutions using dollars through sanctions imposed earlier. But the latest measure is "full-blocking sanctions," which is a much more severe action, a senior administration official said.

The Treasury Department also added more individuals to its sanctions list, including the two adult daughters of Putin -- Katerina Tikhonova, a tech executive, and Maria Vorontsova, who leads state-funded programs -- as well as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's wife and daughter.

The official said the reason for targeting Putin's daughters was because the president's wealth is believed to be hidden with family members.

The United States has been working with other G-7 peers to impose costs on Russia, such as by sanctioning Putin and business oligarchs who are enabling the war, along with restrictions on transactions with the Russian central bank and exclusions of certain banks from the world's main international payment network.

The U.S. Treasury has also prohibited Russia from making debt payments with funds subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

==Kyodo

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