Well Done Boris.....

[ToraToraTora]

https://news.sky.com/story/ukraine-crisis-five-russian-banks-and-three-high-net-worth-individuals-targeted-in-uk-sanctions-on-moscow-12548650
...when Europe and the US follow suit that means all their foreign assets frozen, no interaction with the financial system, SWIFT etc. It's ordinary Russians who'll suffer for Putin's aggression.

[Gromit]

// The White House said on Friday that removing Russia from the SWIFT international banking system, if it decides to invade Ukraine, is not part of the first sanctions package the Biden administration would impose. //

So people will pay Russia in $ dollars not £ pounds.

[royfromaus]

SWIFT is an European company,
____________________________

Was Copied and pasted from a serious website?

[Gromit]

^

Putting text passages between // at the start and // at the end means the text is a quote from another source.

[royfromaus]

Yer a no... but it can't be from a proper journalist site surely?

[royfromaus]

journalistic

[Gromit]

SWIFT is a is a Belgian cooperative society.
Its headquarters are in Wallonia in the Belgian province of Walloon Brabant.

[pat2604]

My Russian doesn't drink Vodka!

[Bobbisox1]

I’ll look at that one Lcg

[Gromit]

Predictably the EU, US, China, Canada and South America are not cutting Russia out of SWIFT for the time being.

So the UK unilaterally doing so, is a bit pointless. But we don’t do much trade with Russia, so it is any easy promise to make.

Countries that do a lot of trade with Russia are not going to be keen, because they want paying for their goods and services.

[Gromit]

The Sky link was *** and Boris did not announce pulling out of SWIFT. The link has been totally rewritten.

[jno]

///The PM also announced sanctions would be applied to billionaires Gennady Timchenko, Boris Rotenberg and Igor Rotenberg as three "very high net-worth individuals".
All three have been on the US sanctions list for a number of years as associates of Mr Putin.///

has that not worked, then?

[ToraToraTora]

it will have curtailed their US operations now their British operations will follow suit jno.

[jno]

will British sanctions hurt any more than US ones? I realise we don't have access to their accounts but if the Yanks couldn't hurt them, can we?

Personally, I'm happy with it, London's been a safe haven for them and their money for far too long, but I don't know if this is a genuine deterrent to anything or just gesture politics.

[ToraToraTora]

"will British sanctions hurt any more than US ones? I realise we don't have access to their accounts but if the Yanks couldn't hurt them, can we? " - Can you stop it with the anti British stuff for once. The US didn't hurt them because they moved ops to here, now they'll have to move again, hopefully the EUSSR will also cut them off so they'll be reduced to some third world sheet hole. No fun for an Oligarch, geddit?

[jno]

I'm talking about individuals rather than banks. Is there evidence that they moved money here as a result of the US sanctioning them?

[gulliver1]

Stop The Russians making huge donations to the
Tory Party....That'll teach them . lol

[ToraToraTora]

no, they are billionaires they'll have a stash in every western nation enough to live on in the way they have become accustomed. They'll have assets in most currencies and markets. The US may have frozen some of that, we will freeze more, hopefully the EUSSR more etc etc until they can only operate in a few places that make it pointless being a billionaire.

[jno]

I fear they'll be welcome in Dubai and suchlike places

[Stickybottle]

As I said earlier :

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/02/22/russia-invasion-ukraine-war-putin-crisis-latest-news2/

MPs have urged the Prime Minister to hit Russia with tougher sanctions, with Foreign Affairs Committee chairman Tom Tugendhat warning that the Government's actions should go "much further, much faster".

He made the comments after Boris Johnson announced Britain is sanctioning three wealthy allies of Vladimir Putin and five Russian banks, under a "first barrage" of punitive measures in response to a "renewed invasion" of Ukraine.

Mr Tugendhat told BBC Radio 4's World At One programme: "I'd like to see this go much further, much faster. As my former boss, the chief of the defence staff, General Lord Richards, put it: clout, don't dribble. You allow people to think that you're not serious if you don't respond seriously quickly, and it can lead to worse confusion in the future."

His comments are the latest in a string of growing criticism from MPs about the scale of the UK sanctions announced today and whether they go far enough.
———
Go hard or go home
It is the only way to deal with Mad Vlad

[jno]

I'm inclined to agree, Stickybottle, the West's indifference to the annexation of the Crimea way back when will have persuaded him that he'll get no more than the occasional slap with a wet hanky. I don't think the "barrage" of sanctions so far will have changed his mind.