In the latest major escalation, late on Saturday European nations together with the US have issued a joint statement in which they announce the following restrictive economic measuresthings:
- Commit to ensuring that “selected Russian banks” are removed from the SWIFT messaging system: “This will ensure that these banks are disconnected from the international financial system and harm their ability to operate globally.”
- Commit to imposing “restrictive measures that will prevent the Russian Central Bank from deploying its international reserves in ways that undermine the impact of our sanctions.”
- Commit to “acting against the people and entities who facilitate the war in Ukraine” by taking measures to limit the sale of citizenship, so called golden passports, that let wealthy Russians connected to the Russian government become citizens
- Commit to launching “a transatlantic task force that will ensure the effective implementation of our financial sanctions by identifying and freezing the assets of sanctioned individuals and companies that exist within our jurisdictions.”
- Stepping up or coordination against disinformation and other forms of hybrid warfare.
EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen broke these down further as follows:
The full statement can be found here. It wasn’t immediately clear which are the “selected Russian banks” or what “restrictive measures” will be taken against the central bank. It also does not detail whether oil and gas payments will stop (according to Bloomberg’s in house energy expect Javier Blas, the answer is no).
Furthermore, as Blas also notes, the German government has said that the ban only affects the Russian banks that were *already sanctioned* a few days ago, in other words, it is toothless as it merely hits banks that have already been sanctioned by other measures. It also means that the SWIFT measure is being taken merely to placate populist anger at no SWIFT measures.
It also means that the only impactful measure is the sanctioning of the Russian central bank, which however has likely anticipated this eventuality and has built up a sufficient war chest to withstand even the harshest sanctions, either on its own or with the help of Beijing.
