Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, triggering rapid coordination among the EU and partners on financial sanctions. Policymakers focused on measures that could quickly limit Russia’s access to international payments and foreign reserves.
The EU prohibited transactions related to managing the reserves and assets of the Central Bank of Russia. This helped immobilise central-bank assets held within the EU and aimed to reduce Russia’s ability to use foreign reserves to cushion sanctions impacts.
The EU adopted a legal ban on providing “specialised financial messaging services” (widely associated with SWIFT) to seven Russian banks. The aim was to disrupt the banks’ ability to send and receive standardized financial messages used for cross-border transactions.
The SWIFT-related disconnections for the initial group of seven banks took effect after a wind-down period. The listed banks included VTB, Bank Otkritie, Novikombank, Promsvyazbank, Bank Rossiya, Sovcombank, and VEB.
As part of the EU’s sixth sanctions package, the SWIFT messaging-services ban was expanded to include Sberbank, Credit Bank of Moscow, and the Russian Agricultural Bank (Rosselkhozbank). This broadened the measure to cover additional major banks beyond the first seven.
The SWIFT messaging-services ban for Sberbank, Credit Bank of Moscow, and Rosselkhozbank became applicable. The expanding list reflected the EU’s move toward tighter constraints on Russia’s banking links to international counterparties.
As the sanctions regime matured, the EU increasingly described SWIFT bans alongside other banking restrictions (such as transaction prohibitions on certain institutions). This signaled a shift from a single tool toward a broader financial isolation strategy.
The EU outlawed certain connections to SPFS (Russia’s System for Transfer of Financial Messages), which Russia developed as an alternative to SWIFT. The goal was to reduce workarounds that could weaken the impact of SWIFT-related restrictions.
The EU added restrictions aimed at non-Russian entities using SPFS or similar messaging services, to address circumvention risks. This broadened the focus from Russia-based banks to networks of foreign facilitators that could help route payments.
In July 2025, the EU decided to extend existing SWIFT bans into full transaction bans for listed banks, meaning EU operators could not engage in any transactions with those banks directly or indirectly. This marked an escalation from restricting messaging access to restricting business with the institutions themselves.
The EU reported that the transaction-ban approach (building on the SWIFT restrictions) applied to many institutions, including Russian banks and some Belarusian and non-EU operators. This reflected a broader “financial perimeter” approach targeting both primary actors and channels used to evade restrictions.
By early 2026, the SWIFT exclusions that began in 2022 were no longer a standalone measure. They had become one component of a wider EU framework that also targets central-bank reserves, alternative messaging systems (SPFS), and a growing set of transaction bans designed to limit circumvention.
Exclusion of Russian Banks from SWIFT and Related Financial Measures (2022–present)