The United States has added seven Russian citizens, eight entities and two vessels to sanctions list for Moscow's actions in Ukraine,

"The Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) updated the Specially Designated Nationals List and the Sectoral Sanctions Identifications List to target sanctions evasion and other activities related to the conflict in Ukraine," the release stated.

The updated Specially Designated Nationals List, announced on December 20 by the Treasury Department, includes Yevgeny Prigozhin, a St. Petersburg businessman whose company has provided catering to the Kremlin.

Prigozhin has been dubbed "Putin’s chef" thanks to major state catering contracts his firms have secured with the Kremlin and elsewhere.

He has also been linked to a notorious "troll factory" that paid Russians to post anonymous comments to news sites, social media networks, and blogs in an effort to bolster Kremlin policies.

The Treasury Department announcement said Prigozhin had provided financial, material and technological support for senior Russian defense officials, and has had extensive business with the Defense Ministry. That includes a company linked to him that has a contract to build a military base near the Russian border with Ukraine, the department said.

“Russia has been building additional military bases near the Ukrainian border and has used these bases as staging points for deploying soldiers into Ukraine,” the announcement said.

According to Radio Liberty, other newly sanctioned individuals include executives with current or previous ties to Bank Rossiya, which the Treasury Department previously sanctioned and called the “personal bank for senior officials of the Russian Federation.”

The current chairman of the bank’s board, Dmitry Lebedev, is among those included on the new list.

Several subsidiaries of natural gas giant Novatek were added to the sanctions list.  The parent company itself, which is Russia's largest independent gas producer, was included in the original sanctions list issued by the United States in 2014.

Fourteen other companies added are subsidiaries of Russian Agricultural Bank, а government-owned bank whose president is Dmitry Patrushev.  His father, Nikolai Patrushev, is the head of Putin’s Security Council, Radio Liberty reports, noting that Russian Agricultural Bank was also included in the original sanctions list in 2014.

The announcement caused an angry response from Moscow, where Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov called the fresh sanctions a “hostile move” and warned that Russia would retaliate.

“We will be expanding our lists, we will see how we can respond asymmetrically,” the state-run TASS news agency quoted Ryabkov as saying.