soared after the statecontrolled groups escaped the sanctionsanalysts say russian institutions are better able to cope with limited sanctions than eight years earlier and russian state banks have cut their exposure to western marketsrussia has since 2014 diversified away from us treasuries and dollars the euro and gold account for a bigger share of russias reserves than do dollars according to a january report from the institute of international financerussia has some strong macroeconomic defences too including abundant hard currency reserves of 635 billion oil prices near 100 a barrel and a low debttogdp ratio of 18 in 2021the ones today were not that significant said samuel charap a senior political scientist at the nonprofit nonpartisan rand corporation about the us sanctionsthe question is where we go from here he said i am increasingly pessimistic and i think there is a high probability of significant further russian military action and i think in that case we are likely to see some of the really qualitatively more devastating measures than in the pastwhat might come nextthe eu has said it is ready to impose massive consequences on russias economy but has also cautioned that given the eus close energy and trade ties to russia it wants to ratchet up sanctions in stagesofficials consider tuesdays measures as a first roundbeyond lenders that do business directly with the breakaway regions its not clear yet when or whether the eu will hit the biggest bankswashington has prepared a raft of measures including barring us financial institutions from processing transactions for major russian banks by cutting correspondent banking relationships sources told reuters last weekdisabling international payments would hit hardthose measures however may be kept in reserverussias sberbank and vtb would face american sanctions if moscow proceeds with its invasion of ukraine a senior us administration official told reportersif such banks did get targeted us banks could face retaliation said charap who pointed to cyber attacks as a potential weapon that could be usedwhat would hit hardestwhat the regions banks and western creditors fear most is the possibility that russia is banned from a widely used global payment system swift which is used by more than 11000 financial institutions in over 200 countriessuch a move would hit russian banks hard but the consequences are complex banning swift would make it tough for european creditors to get their money back and russia has been building up an alternative payment systemdata from the bank of international settlements bis shows that european lenders hold the lions share of the nearly 30 billion in foreign banks exposure to russiawhich foreign banks are most exposedeuropes banks particularly those in austria italy and france are the worlds most exposed to russia and have been on high alert should governments impose new sanctionsitalian and french banks each had outstanding claims of some 25 billion on russia in the third quarter of 2021 according to bis figures austrian banks had 175 billion that compares with 147 billion for the united statesamong