If there is no progress in negotiations with the Russian government to stop its war against Ukraine by the end of the year, Kyiv may demand new sanctions against Russia — including restrictions related to the “international payment system,” former Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk, who leads the country’s delegation to the Minsk peace talks, said in an interview with the Ukraine 24 TV channel.
While Kravchuk did not provide further details of possible sanctions, his comments were understood to mean that Ukraine would demand Russia be excluded from the SWIFT international payment system, which allows financial institutions to conduct international transactions with one another.
“If Russia does not want to reach an agreement through diplomacy and politics, we must do everything we can to force it to stop its aggression and restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity through joint pressure from the world community and Ukraine,” Kravchuk said. “And we will find forms of pressure,” he added.
It is unclear the degree to which Kravchuk’s comments reflect the Ukrainian government’s position. Kravchuk said he was stating his personal opinion. The President’s Office has not yet commented on the issue.
Kravchuk is not the first politician to raise the possibility of excluding Russia from SWIFT. It has been under discussion at different moments since 2014, when Russian troops annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and Kremlin-backed militants reinforced with Russian regular troops seized vast swaths of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region and declared independence from Kyiv. The ensuing war in the Donbas has claimed over 14,000 lives. With few exceptions, the international community continues to recognize Crimea and the Donbas as Ukrainian territory.
In 2015, then-British Prime Minister David Cameron suggested excluding Russia from SWIFT. Later, in 2018, Kurt Volker, a U.S. special envoy to Ukraine, also said that exclusion from SWIFT could be among possible sanctions against Russia.
In 2015, Russian experts told the Moscow Times newspaper that exclusion from SWIFT would be highly detrimental to the country’s financial system.
So far, neither the United States, nor the European Union have gone that far in sanctioning Russia.
Earlier in November, Kravchuk said that Ukraine had suggested holding another meeting in the Normandy Format by the end of the year. The format represents the highest level of negotiations on the Donbas war and includes the presidents of Ukraine and Russia, as well as the leaders of France and Germany as mediators. The four parties have been trying to achieve peace since 2014.
The Minsk talks are part of the same peacemaking process, but the Normandy Format is hierarchically higher. Decisions made during its meetings can potentially shape a final agreement between the parties. The previous Normandy summit took place on Dec. 9, 2019 in Paris.
Kravchuk, 86, the first president of independent Ukraine, took charge of the country’s delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine on July 30. He was appointed by the President’s Office to lead Ukraine’s delegation to the peace talks in Minsk after ex-President Leonid Kuchma, 81, resigned from the post two days prior.
The Trilateral Contact Group includes representatives from Ukraine, the Russian Federation and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). The group’s meetings are often referred to as the Minks peace talks because they have usually been held in Minsk, Belarus.
Before his resignation, Kuchma represented Ukraine in Minsk for five years.
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