Sanktioner mot Ryssland.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican and Democratic U.S. senators introduced legislation on Thursday to impose stiff new sanctions on Russia and combat cyber crime, the latest effort by lawmakers to punish Moscow over interference in U.S. elections and its activities in Syria and Ukraine.

The bill includes restrictions on new Russian sovereign debt transactions, energy and oil projects and Russian uranium imports, and new sanctions on Russian political figures and oligarchs.

It also expresses strong support for NATO and would require that two-thirds of the Senate to vote in favor of any effort to leave the alliance.

Russian markets reacted quickly to the measure, with the rouble slumping toward two-week lows.

The ruble led world currency losses and Russian bonds slumped with stocks after the U.S. announced new sanctions over the nation’s use of chemical weapons, heightening concern about further penalties.

The currency sank to the lowest since November 2016 after the U.S. sanctioned Russia over a nerve-agent attack in the U.K. It extended a decline that began earlier Wednesday after Russian media published the full text of a separate bill in Washington seeking “crushing sanctions” for election meddling.

“Sanctions will remain a risk, so we have had a cautious stance particularly in the corporate space," said Shamaila Khan, who holds Russian bonds as a director of emerging-market debt at AllianceBernstein in New York. "Sanctioning sovereign debt will be a last resort and corporate debt and individuals are a more likely target."

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Earlier, Russia’s Kommersant newspaper posted the draft introduced last week by a bipartisan group of legislators. The bill includes proposals to sanction new sovereign debt and block dollar transactions of the nation’s biggest lenders. The bill includes proposals to sanction new sovereign debt and block dollar transactions of the nation’s biggest lenders.

“The Kommersant publication was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Denis Davydov, an analyst at Nordea Bank in Moscow. “It’s important to be able to read and assess the actual bill.”

Då låter han hellre Ryssland duka under av svält.

Russia is ready to absorb the blow from any new sanctions the U.S. throws its way, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

Measures to cut down holdings of Treasuries and reduce exposure to the dollar have made the economy less vulnerable to the threat of deeper penalties, Moody’s analyst Kristin Lindow said in an interview. The country could even weather the unlikely scenario of sanctions on sovereign debt recently proposed by U.S. lawmakers, she said.

The central bank has accelerated efforts to safeguard its financial system since Washington blocked the country’s biggest aluminum producer from accessing capital markets in April, sending investors fleeing from the country’s assets. Since then Russia appears to have sold four fifths of its cache of U.S. government debt, an amount totaling $81 billion.

“When sanctions were imposed in April, it became clear that transactions in dollars could be problematic to entities and individuals in Russia, so they are planning accordingly,” Lindow said by phone from New York. “I think that is something any responsible policy maker would do.”

Moody’s put Russia on a positive outlook in January, setting it on course for a possible escape from junk in the next 12-18 months. S&P Global Ratings lifted the nation to investment grade earlier this year.