Washington and Brussels are no longer considering disconnecting Russian banks from the SWIFT system as an option for possible sanctions. About this on January 17 on its site reported the newspaper Handelsblatt, citing government sources.
Instead of the above measure, targeted economic methods of influencing the Russian banking sector are being prepared. Disconnecting the country from SWIFT could lead to destabilization of financial markets in the short term, the newspaper notes.
As specified in the publication, the sanctions policy against Moscow will be discussed on Thursday by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin.
On January 16, the future chairman of the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Friedrich Merz, noted that restricting Russia’s access to the SWIFT international payment system could be compared to an “atomic bomb” explosion on the market of capital, goods and services.
On January 14, German Bundestag deputy Mariana Harder-Kühnel said that Russia’s disconnection from SWIFT would have serious consequences for everyone, especially energy prices in Germany.
On December 30, the Minister of Finance of the Russian Federation Anton Siluanov said that the disconnection of the Russian Federation from the SWIFT system is not beneficial to anyone. To do this, Europe would have to abandon Russian goods. On December 20, Olga Skorobogatova, First Deputy Chairman of the Bank of Russia, also said that the exclusion of Russia from the international interbank system for transmitting information and making SWIFT payments is unprofitable for other states.
On January 8, The New York Times published an article about possible US sanctions against Russia. It says that in the event of an alleged Russian “invasion” of Ukraine, the United States Department of Commerce may prohibit the export to Russia of any consumer goods containing US-made parts.
The authors of the article emphasized that Russia does not produce many of these goods and the consequences for consumers could be serious.
In recent weeks, a number of Western media reported on alleged plans for an “invasion” of the Russian Federation into Ukraine, against the background of which there are calls in Washington to increase sanctions pressure on the Russian side.
Moscow has repeatedly denied rumors of alleged preparations for an attack. On December 6, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Peskov, said that the Kremlin sees the West’s clearly aggressive rhetoric on Ukraine and media stuffing about the allegedly planned invasion of this country. According to him, the tension in Ukraine can be removed only by obtaining a guarantee that Kiev has abandoned a possible solution to the Donbas problem by force.
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