WASHINGTON, October 7. /TASS/. The United States has exempted Turkey’s Denizbank, which belongs to Russia’s Sberbank group, from sanctions imposed on major Russian banks over the Ukrainian crisis.

The US Treasury Department said on Monday that Denizbank and its structures were exempted from the sanctions, stipulating that the exemption was not applied to other organizations and persons under American sanctions.

Denizbank has belonged to the Sberbank group since 2012.

Sanction attacks continue despite the deal on ceasefire in Ukraine

The European Union and the United States imposed the latest batch of sectoral sanctions against Russia on September 12 despite the deal on a ceasefire, signed in Minsk a week before, between Kiev and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s republics (DPR and LPR) in the embattled southeast of Ukraine.

The new US sanctions list includes Sberbank, Bank of Moscow, Gazprombank, Rosselkhozbank, Vnesheconombank, and VTB. Now they cannot borrow for a period of more than 30 days. The US has also blocked the assets of five defense enterprises and banned the export of goods, services and technologies for projects carried out by Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, Lukoil, Surgutneftegaz and Rosneft.

Russia came under Western punitive measures, originally visa bans and asset freezes, for incorporation of Crimea in mid-March after a coup in Ukraine in February. Later, Western claims that Russia is taking part in hostilities in southeast Ukraine, which Moscow has repeatedly denied, resulted in more serious, sectoral, restrictions.

In response, Moscow imposed on August 7 a one-year ban on imports of beef, pork, poultry, fish, cheeses, fruit, vegetables and dairy products from Australia, Canada, the EU, the United States and Norway.