By Jonathan Landay and Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A senior U.S. diplomat said on Thursday the United States will impose “hundreds and hundreds and hundreds” of sanctions against Russia in a new package marking the second anniversary of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland said some of the sanctions would target those responsible for the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but most will hit “Putin’s war machine” and close gaps in existing sanctions regimes.

President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that Washington would announce a major package of sanctions against Russia on Friday, without giving details.

“We will have a crushing new package of sanctions, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them in the next couple days … and some of them will be targeted at folks directly involved in Navalny’s death,” Nuland said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington.

She said the vast majority are designed to further weaken “(Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s war machine, to close gaps in the sanctions regime that he has been able to evade. But I anticipate that as time goes on, we will be able to put forward more and more sanctions,” she said.

(Reporting by Jonathan Landay and Patricia Zengerle; editing by Jonathan Oatis)