This is the latest on the less-than-co-ordinated US and EU sanctions offensive against Russia. One of the country's largest private banks is now on the US hit-list, although not its assets under management as yet.

As part of the escalating power-game in the Ukraine, the US Department of the Treasury has imposed yet more sanctions on Russians - this time targeting financial institutions, energy firms, the arms industry and "those undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty or misappropriating Ukrainian property." 

The US sanctions are as follows.

* A prohibition against US persons providing fresh finance to two major Russian financial institutions (Gazprombank OAO and VEB) and two Russian energy firms (OAO Novatek and Rosneft, which recently signed a £875 million deal with British Petroleum).
* Some sort of 'designation' desiged to inconvenience eight Russian arms firms. These are Almaz-Antey, Federal State Unitary Enterprise State Research and Production Enterprise Bazalt, JSC Concern Sozvezdie, JSC MIC NPO Mashinostroyenia, Kalashnikov Concern, KBP Instrument Design Bureau, Radio-Electronic Technologies and Uralvagonzavod.
* Another so-called 'designation' against the “Luhansk People’s Republic” and the “Donetsk People’s Republic,” shadowy entities that are trying to assert government-style authority over parts of the disintegrating Ukraine, along with Aleksandr Borodai, the self-declared “prime minister” of the Donetsk People’s Republic.
* Another 'designation' for Feodosiya Enterprises, a shipping firm in the Crimean peninsula which allegedly misappropriated Ukrainian government assets.
* Another one against four Russian government officials, including one Sergey Beseda of Russia’s Federal Security Service, Oleg Savelyev who is Russia’s Minister for Crimean Affairs, Sergei Neverov who works at the Duma, Russia's parliament, and Igor Shchegolev who works directly for President Putin. The relevant 'executive orders', whose constitutionality is questionable, are numbered 13660 and 13661.

Gazprombank OAO has more than 40 branches in Russia and some international subsidiaries.  It specializes in private banking and corporate finance. It provides services to more than 45,000 companies and 3 million private individuals. The other targeted bank, VEB, is more of a development bank and a payment agent for the Russian government.

Meanwhile, one of the organs of the EU has announced that it wishes to persuade the governmental club as a whole to increase sanctions against Russia, perhaps along the same lines, and probably for the same reasons, as the US. The European Council is asking the European Investment Bank to "suspend the signature of new financing operations in the Russian Federation." Its website does not say that it has done so.