The EU will exclude several Russian banks from the Swift banking communications network. The current French EU Council Presidency announced that the permanent representatives of the 27 EU states in Brussels had agreed on this on Tuesday evening. As the German press agency learned from diplomatic circles, seven Russian banks will be affected by the measure. The largest Russian bank Sberbank is therefore not one of them.
The Swift ban is one of a whole series of sanctions that the EU decided to follow the Russian attack on Ukraine. The agreement of the permanent representatives should be confirmed by the capitals in a written procedure on Tuesday evening. The sanctions should then be published in the EU Official Journal. From that point on they would be in force.
RT and Sputnik should be banned
The same applies to the punitive measures once morest the Russian state media RT and Sputnik, the distribution of which is to be banned throughout the EU due to the accusation of war propaganda. The French Council Presidency announced that this was also approved by the permanent representatives on Tuesday evening. The written procedure and the publication in the EU Official Journal should follow by Wednesday morning.
