European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Sunday that EU airspace will be closed to Russian planes, and that Russian state media will be banned from the territory of member states. The closure of the airspace will apply to aircraft that are Russian-owned, registered in Russia, or under Russian control. This includes private planes of oligarchs.
The state media Rasha Today and Sputnik, as well as their affiliates, will be banned. Von der Leyen pointed out that "they will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin's war". She added that sanctions are also being prepared for the "second aggressor" in this war, that is, the President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko.
An even harsher punitive measure in the West was announced the day before.
The United States, the European Union, Canada and Great Britain agreed on Saturday to exclude Russia from the Association for International, Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT), which is effectively a global payment system. In practice, this will mean that Russian banks will no longer have access to the international financial system during financial transactions or trade in securities, that "their ability to do global business" will be harmed.
Western officials say that as a result of these sanctions, it will be difficult for Russians to do business with foreign countries, which will affect their export of energy and agricultural products to the Western market. Foreign exchange reserves of the Russian central bank abroad in the West will be frozen. Al Jazeera reports that Russia has 630 billion dollars in foreign exchange reserves.
Clients of Russian banks under sanctions will not be able to use their credit cards abroad.
It is not yet known whether this measure will apply to all Russian banks, or only to some of them. The SWIFT network is headquartered in Belgium and includes more than 11 financial institutions worldwide.
The abolition of SWIFT will not affect Russian business with China, as it has a separate system.
On Friday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Zelensky called on the West to exclude Russia from SWIFT, but at that time, a large part of the EU countries were still hesitant. Probably one of the reasons for the delay is the fact that it will affect French and Italian companies, which do business with Russia, and especially Germany, which is largely dependent on Russian gas.
Back in 2014, after the annexation of Crimea, Russia was threatened with such a scenario. Nothing came of it, but in the meantime they developed their equivalent of SWIFT called "Mir", but it only took off with a few eastern countries.
Termination of access to SWIFT is considered one of the most severe economic sanctions. So far, only Iran has been excluded in 2012, when Tehran was accused of developing nuclear weapons. As a result, Iran's foreign trade dropped by 30 percent. However, due to the long series of years under sanctions, Russia has created a certain kind of resilience, which will at least partially spare it from the Iranian scenario.
FM
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