mumbai bank transactions with russia have come to a standstill despite several lenders being excluded from the swift ban bankers said that this was because multinational lenders were selfsanctioning transactions fearing action from their authoritiesthe reserve bank of india rbi is understood to have had discussions with sbi and uco bank on options available for indian trade we do not have correspondent relations with russian banks we deal with mostly other european banks who act as intermediaries as both we and russian banks have account with them and settlement takes place through them said a senior bankermultinational banks have stopped dealing with russia which makes it impossible for us to do any transactions the only way now is to have a system similar to what was done for iranian oil payments he said the direct trade arrangements are almost akin to barter and work when there is a balance in the trade diplomatic decisions taken by the european union in consultation with the uk canada and the us bring swift into efforts to end this crisis by requiring us to disconnect select russian banks from our financial messaging services as previously stated we will fully comply with applicable sanctions laws swift said in a statementswift cited a march 2 legal instruction by the european commission ec as the reason behind the bank the ec notification said that the banks targeted were chosen as these are already subject to sanctions by the eu and other g7 countriesit will take effect as of march 12 this will give swift and other operators a brief transition period to implement the measure thereby mitigating any possible negative impacts for eu businesses and financial markets depending on russias behaviour the commission is prepared to add further russian banks at short notice in addition the eu has prohibited investing in projects cofinanced by the russian direct investment fund the provision of eurodenominated banknotes to russia has also been prohibited the notification said