The West needs to make sure no Russian bank has access to the SWIFT messaging system, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said on Thursday during a visit to Lithuania.
“We worked with the US the EU and G7 to cut off funding for Putin’s war machine, kicking Russian banks after the financial system … we need to go further. We need to make sure no Russian bank has access to SWIFT,” Truss told a news conference.
Germany and its Western allies agreed to cut Russia out of the SWIFT global payment system, a spokesperson for the German government said on February 27, in a third sanctions package aimed at halting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In March, Swift was taken over by seven Russian banks: Novikombank, Bank Otkritie, Promsvyazbank, Bank Rossiya, Sovcombank, Vnesheconombank (VEB), and VTB Bank.
Currently, the European Commission is attempting to prohibit three more, including Sberbank, the biggest lender in the country and the engine of almost one-third of Russia’s banking sector.
In the next days, the agreement is anticipated to be finalized, subject to the blessing of EU ambassadors.
Removing banks from Swift will guarantee that they “are disconnected from the international financial system and harm their ability to operate globally,” according to statements made by the US, the UK, the EU, and other nations.
The intention is to stop Russian businesses from utilizing Swift’s typically easy and quick transactions, which would impede payments for their substantial exports of agricultural and energy products.
The Russian government will eventually run out of money from banks because they will have to interact directly with each other, which will incur more fees and delays.
Russia vowed to swiftly withdraw Crimea after its annexation in 2014. Russia claimed that doing so would be the same as declaring war.
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