U announces harsher sanctions on Russia, including cutting banks off from SWIFT
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says the EU, along with the United States and other Western partners, plans to impose further sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, including cutting off a number of Russian banks from the SWIFT interbank payments system.
Here are the three measures she announced:
"We will commit to ensuring a certain number of Russian banks are removed from SWIFT. This will ensure these banks are disconnected from the financial system and harm their ability to operate globally.
"We will stop Putin from using his war chest. We will paralyse the assets of Russia Central Bank. This will freeze its transactions and make it impossible for it for assets to be liquidised.
"We will work to prohibit Russian oligarchs from using their financial assets on our markets."
"Putin embarked on a path to destroy Ukraine, but what he is also doing is destroying the future of his own country," she said.
She's now making the same statement in German and French.
