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The Biden administration announced new sanctions against Russia, targeting their banking system as well as a number of prominent individuals and their families, but stopped short of sanctioning Russian President Vladimir Putin himself or taking the significant step of cutting the country off from the SWIFT banking system.
Addressing reporters Thursday afternoon, President Biden did not rule out taking those measures in the future, but defended not going so far just yet.
WHAT IS SWIFT AND HOW COULD IT CLIP PUTIN’S FINANCIAL WINGS?
“It’s not a bluff, it’s on the table,” Biden said about sanctioning the Russian president after a reporter recalled Biden saying it was an option and that this was not a matter to bluff about.
For now, the administration said they are sanctioning Russian elites Sergei Ivanov and his son Sergei, Andrey Patrushev and his son Nikolai, Igor Sechin and his son Ivan, Andrey Puchkov, Yuriy Solviev and two real estate companies he owns, Galina Ulyutina and Alexander Vedyakhin.
President Biden listens to questions from reporters while speaking about the Russian invasion of Ukraine in the East Room of the White House, Thursday, Feb. 24, 2022, in Washington.
(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Biden said sanctions will also target more major Russian banks, including VTB, Sberbank, Bank Otkritie, Sovcombank OJSC and Novikombank. The sanctions will make it harder for Russia to do business in dollars, Euros, pounds and yen, and there will be “new limitations” on what can be exported to Russia, he said.
What the sanctions do not do is cut Russia off from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, banking system. SWIFT is the main global network that allows financial institutions to send and receive information on international bank transfers.
SWIFT is incorporated and headquartered in Belgium with 26 offices across the world, providing messaging services to banks in more than 200 countries. It is overseen by the central banks of the G-10, comprised of Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, Switzerland and Sweden.
While SWIFT does not hold funds or manage client accounts, it can cut banks (including those of an entire country) off from its system when sanctions against the institutions are imposed by the European Union, in which Belgium is a member state.
The impacts of such an action can be crippling, and the tool has been used before as an international response. SWIFT booted EU-sanctioned Iranian banks from its network in 2012 and again in 2018.
Asked why he did not take this step against Russia now, Biden said that European allies were not ready to do so, and that the sanctions the U.S. has proposed “are of equal consequence, maybe more consequence than SWIFT,” and “exceed anything that’s ever been done.”
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Biden also said that blocking Russia from SWIFT “is always an option,” but that the other sanctions should be given a chance.
“Let’s have a conversation another month or so to see if they’re working,” Biden said.
Fox News’ Brooke Singman and FOX Business’ Breck Dumas contributed to this report.
