The European Union, US and their allies have agreed to cut off a number of Russian banks from the main international payment system, Swift and they have agreed to The assets of Russia’s central bank will also be frozen, limiting Russia’s ability to access its overseas reserves.
With an objective to to “further isolate Russia from the international financial system”, a joint statement said. Russia is heavily reliant on the Swift system for its key oil and gas exports.
Pressure had been building on EU leaders to cut Russia off from Swift in response to the escalating military crisis in Ukraine. The joint sanctions are the harshest measures imposed to date on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
Announcing the measures on Sunday, EU president Ursula von der Leyen, said: “Important Russian banks will be excluded from the Swift system. We will also ban the transactions of Russia’s central bank and freeze all its assets, to prevent it from financing Putin’s war.”
The banks affected were not immediately named, but a German spokesman said they would include “all those already sanctioned by the international community, as well as other institutions, if necessary”.
