Russia should not be cut off from SWIFT at the moment – Germany’s Scholz

BERLIN – Cutting off Russia from the SWIFT global interbank payment system should not be part of the second EU sanctions package against Russia that EU leaders will decide upon at a meeting on Thursday in Brussels, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said.

“It is very important that we agree those measures that have been prepared – and keep everything else for a situation where it may be necessary to go beyond that,” Scholz told reporters, responding to a question on SWIFT, as he arrived to an emergency summit set to discuss Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

(Reporting by Riham Alkousaa and Sabine Siebold)