U.S. targets Putin's daughters with sanctions amid outrage over civilian deaths in Ukraine

The United States on Wednesday announced sanctions targeting Russian President Vladimir Putin's two adult daughters and said it was toughening penalties against Russian banks in retaliation for "war crimes" in Ukraine.

The moves against Sberbank and Alfa Bank prohibit assets from touching the U.S. financial system and bar Americans from doing business with those institutions.

In addition to sanctions aimed at Putin's adult daughters, Mariya Putina and Katerina Tikhonova, the U.S. is targeting Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin; the wife and children of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov; and members of Russia's Security Council, including Dmitry Medvedev, a former president and prime minister.

The penalties cut all of Putin's close family members off from the U.S. financial system and freeze any assets they hold in the United States.

The European Union's executive branch, meanwhile, has proposed a ban on coal imports from Russia, which are an estimated 4 billion euros ($5.4 billion Cdn) per year. It would be the first time the 27-nation bloc has sanctioned the country's lucrative energy industry over the war.

Norway on Wednesday decided to follow other European nations as it announced it was expelling three Russian diplomats. Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt said the move comes "at a time when the whole world is shaken by reports of Russian forces abusing civilians, especially in the city of Bucha."

Nearly 200 Russian diplomatic staff have been expelled from European countries this week amid increasing outrage over the killings of civilians in Ukraine.

Over the past few days, a global outcry has been raised over what appear to be intentional killings of civilians in Bucha and other Ukrainian towns before Russian forces withdrew from the outskirts of Kyiv. The evidence led Western nations to expel scores of Moscow's diplomats and propose further sanctions.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has kept up demands for war-crimes trials for Russian troops and their leaders, while warning they were regrouping for fresh assaults on Ukraine's east and south.

Speaking by video Tuesday to the UN Security Council, Zelensky said civilians in towns around Kyiv were tortured, shot in the back of the head, thrown down wells, blown up with grenades in their apartments and crushed to death by tanks while in cars.

Those who carried out the killings and those who gave the orders "must be brought to justice immediately for war crimes" in front of a tribunal similar to the one established at Nuremberg after the Second World War, he said.

Moscow's UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, said "not a single local person" suffered from violence while Bucha was under Russian control, and, reiterating Kremlin comments, said video footage of bodies in the streets was "a crude forgery" staged by the Ukrainians.

The German government on Wednesday said it has information indicating bodies found after Ukraine retook Bucha last week had been lying there since at least March 10, when Russian troops were in control of the town.

Government spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit told reporters in Berlin that the information was based on non-commercial satellite images taken March 10-18 of Yablonska Street in Bucha.