Russia should abandon the use of the Western-controlled global financial messaging system SWIFT, the head of Russia’s second-largest bank has argued.

VTB CEO Andrey Kostin has been persistently calling for the increased use of domestic currencies by Russia and its trade partners, describing it as a sanctions-induced necessity.

“We need to kill SWIFT in our transactions, the issue is quite simple, but it will require certain actions, including within individual countries,” Kostin stated on Friday at the International Banking Forum in Sochi.

He noted that most of Russia’s payments are already made in national currencies, including in trade with China, Indonesia, India, as well as Arab and African states.

“De facto, such a shift towards financial settlements in national currencies with the Global South is already being implemented to a large extent,” Kostin said.

According to the banker, the process is irreversible, as more and more countries realize they could be next targets of the West’s use of the dollar and euro as political tools.

Earlier this month, Kostin told RT that the Global South should establish a new financial system based on national currencies in order to mitigate the risks posed by the West. He insisted that the dollar, and the entire Western financial system built around it, has been jeopardized by the sanctions on Russia. The banker noted, however, that the goal is not to fight the Western financial system but to build a parallel system that will work to the benefit of the Global South.

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