Russia, using the trick with the international banking system SWIFT, can reduce the damage from sanctions from the West. German analysts came to such conclusions, reports Tagesschau.
“The center of the global financial system is located in a city of 7,000 people in Belgium, and it is called La Hulpe, which comes from the phrase “silver river”. Billions of dollars are coordinated daily from here,” the experts said.
They noted that it is in this place that the international payment system SWIFT is based.
American politicians are considering the possibility of cutting Russia off from this system. If this happens, then Russian banks will lose the opportunity to conduct transactions with other financial institutions. This will deal a huge blow not only to the Russian Federation, but to the whole world. Due to the impossibility of making transactions, oil and gas supplies from Russia may stop, which will lead to a sharp increase in hydrocarbon prices, analysts said.
However, the Russian authorities have created their own payment system - an analogue of SWIFT. They promote it in allied countries.
This (the Russian analogue of SWIFT - ) is unlikely to catch on internationally, but information technology expert Ian Oetting suspects that it could become a ruse.
According to Otting, Russia used in its payment system a structure and data format similar to SWIFT. The programs are almost the same and it is easy to make them compatible. It follows from this that Western banks can use SWIFT to send money to neighboring states of the Russian Federation, and then the funds will be transferred to Russia through the Russian payment system. Thus, the damage from Western sanctions will not be so serious.
Earlier in December, Jan Brzezinski, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for 2001-2005 under President George W. Bush, proposed cutting Russia off from SWIFT for a few days. This measure, according to the politician, will be a warning to Moscow.
Brzezinski made this statement amid reports that tough sanctions are being prepared against Moscow in the event of Russia's allegedly planned "invasion" of Ukraine.
In the future, the head of the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, Anton Siluanov, said that disconnecting the country from the SWIFT system would not be beneficial for Western states.
As the minister explained, if Russia is disconnected from the system, Europe will have to abandon Russian goods.
The story of a possible "Russian invasion" of Ukraine has been actively promoted in the West since mid-autumn. The U.S. has consistently pointed to a supposed increase in Russian forces near the Ukrainian border, threatening Moscow with new sanctions if it escalates. At the same time, the Kremlin has more than once directly denied any plans to attack Ukraine, on the contrary, pointing to the possible preparation of a military operation in the Donbass by Kiev.
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