The United Kingdom has added several high-profile Russian individuals and companies to its sanctions list as Prime Minister Boris Johnson vowed to tighten the "economic vice" around President Vladimir Putin over Moscow's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
The British government said on March 24 that 59 individuals and entities had been added to the sanctions list, effectively freezing their assets and restricting the people on the list from coming to the country.
The expanded list includes Russian oligarchs Evgeny Shvidler, financier Oleg Tinkov, and German Gref, the head of Russia's largest bank, Sberbank. Companies now on the list include Gazprombank, Alfa Bank, and the state-run shipping firm Sovcomflot.
"The harder our sanctions, the tougher our economic vice around the Putin regime, the more we can and do to help the Ukrainians [and] I think the faster that this thing could be over," Johnson said at an extraordinary NATO summit in Brussels after the updated list was announced.
The United States and its allies have imposed several series of crippling economic and financial sector sanctions against Russia since it launched a war against Ukraine on February 24.
U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to announce more penalties against Moscow on March 24.
His national-security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told reporters on March 22 the actions "will focus not just on adding new sanctions but on ensuring that there is joint effort to crack down on evasion on sanctions."
Gazprombank is one of the main channels for payments for Russian oil and gas. Alfa-Bank is one of Russia's top private lenders.