WASHINGTON, May 18. /TASS/. The US has decided to expand its sectoral sanctions on Russia and sanction more than 300 individuals and entities, a senior US official said on Thursday.

The restrictive measures will affect not only Russia, but also some third countries, the official told reporters in a conference call ahead of US President Joe Biden’s trip to Japan for a G7 summit.

"The United States will be rolling out a substantial package" of sanctions, the official said. "We will continue to expand export controls to make it even harder for Russia to sustain its war machine. Among other things, this involves extensively restricting categories of goods key to the battlefield, and also cutting off roughly 70 entities from Russia and third countries from receiving US exports by adding them to the Commerce blacklist. Moreover, we will announce upwards of 300 new sanctions against individuals, entities, vessels, and aircraft. These will go after circumvention. These will go after financial facilitators, as well as future energy and extractive capabilities of Russia and other actors helping to support the war (the special military operation - TASS)," the official went on to say.

"We’ll also expand our sanctions authorities to additional sectors of the Russian economy key to its military-industrial complex and impose new bans to prevent Russia from benefiting from our services," the official continued.