On Wednesday, the European Union announced that within 10 days, it intends to remove seven Russian banks from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, messaging system.
The list of sanctioned banks includes Russia’s second-largest bank, VTB Bank, alongside Bank Otkritie, Novikombank, Promsvyazbank, Bank Rossiya, Sovcombank and VEB. Without access to SWIFT, which is a Belgian messaging system that connects over 11,000 financial institutions worldwide, Russian banks and, by proxy, the Russian economy are likely to endure severe losses. For example, Iran lost 30% of its foreign trade after being banned from SWIFT in 2012.