Japan is joining the rest of the G7 in blocking Russian access to SWIFT, an international banking system.
Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced Sunday that the country will band with the European Union, Canada, the UK, and the US in removing Russian banks from its SWIFT, or Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication services.
Kishida added that said Japan will also place further sanctions on Russian officials and send $100 million in emergency humanitarian aid funding to Ukraine. And with Japan’s participation, the full G7 is now onboard with the SWIFT ban.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement on Sunday that the US welcomes the stance and push “to isolate Russia from the international financial system and our economies.”
“Following Japan’s announcement, the entire G7 now supports disconnecting selected Russian banks from SWIFT, restrictions on the Russian Central Bank, and sanctioning key Russian leaders, including President Putin,” Psaki said.
She continued: “Prime Minister Kishida and the Government of Japan have been leaders in condemning President Putin’s attack on Ukraine and we will continue working closely together to impose further severe costs and make Putin’s war of choice a strategic failure.”
SWIFT is a large-scale global platform for banks to communicate on financial matters such as transfers, transactions, and trades. It connects more than 11,000 financial services companies across 200 countries and territories, hosting an average of 42 million messages a day, Bloomberg reported.
In a joint statement earlier this week announcing the SWIFT ban, the leaders of the EU, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, the UK, and the US wrote that they plan to “hold Russia to account and collectively ensure that this war is a strategic failure for Putin.”
“Even beyond the measures we are announcing today, we are prepared to take further measures to hold Russia to account for its attack on Ukraine,” they said.
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