Russia will not be disconnected from SWIFT, Roman Chernov, the executive director of the payment system’s Russia office, has said.
“No one is going to disconnect us from SWIFT. Why? It’s very simple – it’s not beneficial to anyone,” he said while speaking before a roundtable hosted by Russia’s lower house of parliament, the Duma, on Tuesday.
Chernov suggested that unplugging Russia from the payment system would not be at all beneficial to those suggesting such a step, since the Russian Central Bank has already created its own backup system for the transfer of financial messages and payments, “thereby cooling the ardor of hot heads talking about disconnecting the country from SWIFT.”
He added that disconnecting Russia from the international payment system would be unprofitable, since the country is a major international trade partner for many countries, and because a shutoff would leave US entities holding Russian state debt unable to receive dividends. Russia is known to be one of the system’s largest users.
At the roundtable, Russian Central Bank Deputy Chairwoman Olga Skorobogatova similarly indicated that the financial authority did not see any risk of a possible disconnection of Russia from SWIFT in the foreseeable future.
Discussions about the possible disconnect started up again in April after the European Parliament passed a non-binding resolution to the effect that a “Russian invasion of Ukraine” should lead to the immediate exclusion of Russia from SWIFT, the seizure of Russian oligarchs’ European assets, and a halt to the purchase of Russian energy supplies.
European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell later stated that it was not within the EU’s purview to make a decision on cutting Russia off from the Belgium-headquartered cooperative society.
In late May, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the European Union an unreliable partner, and said that the scenario for disconnecting Moscow from the SWIFT system could not be ruled out, adding that the government and Central Bank were preparing possible workarounds.
Meanwhile, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Pankin told Sputnik that SWIFT would suffer material losses and its reputation would be damaged if Moscow was shut off from the system. Late last month, another foreign ministry official confirmed that the latest threats to disconnect Russia were coming from the United States.
The Russian backup to SWIFT, SPFS, currently has several hundred institutions connected to the system, with 23 foreign banks connected to as of late 2020.
