Ukraine calls for SWIFT ban on Russia, European Union unsure

Kyiv
is distressed at the European Union leaders’ hesitation to impose the
potentially most damaging sanction on Russia, even as Vladimir Putin’s forces surrounded Ukraine via land, air and sea.

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Dmytro
Kuleba, the foreign minister of Ukraine, is angry as EU heads of state and
member nations are unlikely to block Russia from an international payments
system through which it receives foreign currency.

‘Blood on their hands’

With
Russian advancing and bombing Kyiv on the second day of the invasion, Kuleba
warned that European and US politicians would have “blood on their hands” if they
failed to cut Russia from the so-called SWIFT payments system.

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“I
will not be diplomatic on this,” he tweeted. “Everyone who now doubts whether
Russia should be banned from SWIFT has to understand that the blood of innocent
Ukrainian men, women and children will be on their hands too. BAN RUSSIA FROM
SWIFT.”

SWIFT is key to Russia

The
Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) is used by
over 11,000 financial institutions to send secure payment orders and is key to
the movement of funds to Russia’s oil and gas sector, which has buyers from
industrialised Western Europe.

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Kuleba
said removing Russia from the SWIFT system would make it close to impossible
for financial institutions to send money in or out of the country, with
consequences for both the country’s oil and gas sector and its European
customers.

He
also said, “western inaction or underreaction would have unthinkable
consequences”. Among the G7 leaders, Canada’s Justin Trudeau was the leader to
express support for finding a way to enforce the ban.

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“We’re
imposing new and severe sanctions on those responsible for Russia’s brutal,
unjustified attack on Ukraine. These sanctions will target banks, financial
elites, and members of the Russian Security Council — including the Defence,
Finance, and Justice Ministers,” Trudeau wrote on Twitter.

The
Irish taoiseach Micheál Martin said his government would also support “the
strongest possible sanctions”. Lithuania’s president Gitanas Nausėda, said the
EU needed to learn the lessons that the bloc’s previous sanctions had been “too
weak”.

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“We
cannot have the luxury of being a discussion club,” he said. “Discussions are
useful but we cannot forever be in discussions… They need our support today,
tomorrow might be too late”.