Ukrainian officials are continuing to push the United States to remove Russia from a key international payment system, even after President Joe Biden declined to do so twice since the invasion.
The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, SWIFT, is the main system that facilitates cross-border financial transactions and money transfers. SWIFT is overseen by the Bank of Belgium and is used by 11,000 institutions worldwide.
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Dmytro Kuleba, the minister of foreign affairs for Ukraine, said on Friday that he spoke with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and emphasized “the need to use all U.S. influence on some hesitant European countries in order to ban Russia from SWIFT.”
Another call with my American friend and counterpart @SecBlinken on the need to use all US influence on some hesitant European countries in order to ban Russia from SWIFT. We also discussed further supply of defensive weapons to Ukraine.
— Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) February 25, 2022
A day earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said, “We demand the disconnection of Russia from SWIFT, the introduction of a no-fly zone over Ukraine, and other effective steps to stop the aggressor.”
Biden announced two different sets of sanctions on Wednesday and Thursday, though neither included kicking Russia out of SWIFT.
“The sanctions that we’ve proposed on all their banks are of equal consequence, maybe more consequence, than SWIFT, No. 1. No. 2, it is always an option, but right now, that’s not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take,” Biden told reporters in response to a question about why Russia’s removal from SWIFT was not part of the sanctions package.
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The White House defended the sanctions in the face of backlash.
Deputy national security adviser and deputy National Economic Council director Daleep Singh told reporters on Thursday, “I think, without question, [the sanctions] were the most consequential ever levied on Russia and, arguably, the most consequential ever levied in history, if you look at the aggregate financial impact on Russia.”
While the U.S. initially promised a “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign against Russia, the administration instead opted to sanction portions of the Russian financial system, select members of Putin’s inner circle of advisers, some of whom were already on U.S. sanctions lists, and block future investments in Luhansk and Donetsk, the two Ukrainian separatist regions Putin recognized as independent earlier this week.
