PETROPAVLOVSK-KAMCHATSKIY (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 29th April, 2021) KAMCHATSKIY, Russia, April 29 (Sputnik) - Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Thursday characterized discussion of replacing SWIFT in Russia as out of place, but added that Russia is a self-sufficient country, and the payment system is just one service of many.
"I don't think that hypothetical arguments are appropriate here ... It is probably time for everyone, including Americans, to understand that Russia is a self-sufficient country. Russia is a strong self-sufficient state, and the world is much larger than the United States ... SWIFT � it is, though dominant, still only one of the services on the financial market," Peskov said, as aired by Russia's Channel One.
SWIFT is an international interbank system for transferring information and making payments. Its services are used by over 11,000 of the largest organizations in almost all countries of the world.
Recently, there have been multiple reports that Russia may be cut off from the system as one of the tougher Western sanctions. At the end of April, the European Parliament published a draft resolution, which once again proposed to disconnect Russia from SWIFT. However, SWIFT is a private organization and the EU has no control over who is connected to the system.
In response to this threat, Russia created its own payment system. So far, 23 entities from Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Germany and Switzerland are connected to it.
