No country has ever tried to enforce such sweeping restrictions against an economy as large as Russia’s, the authors of the article published on Saturday point out.

In his opinion, such measures will lead to disorder in the economies of developed countries, especially European ones, which will cause the destabilization of the global financial system.

The influential daily acknowledged that such actions could lead to a strong response from Moscow.

Another US newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, said on Friday that the proposed restrictions would hit state banks, high-tech exports and sovereign debt transactions.

Citing his government officials, the paper stressed that, for the time being, the United States is not considering imposing sanctions on Russia’s oil and natural gas exports, or excluding the Eurasian country from the Swift international payment system.

On January 17, the German newspaper Handelsblatt reported, citing government sources, that Washington and the European Union ruled out disconnecting Russian banks from the Swift system as an option for possible sanctions.

However, a spokesman for the US National Security Council later stated that neither option was ruled out, and that bank closures in the Swift system were possible in the event of a further rise in tensions around Ukraine.

For the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Germany, Friedrich Merz, Europe will make a mistake if it tries to disconnect Russia from that international payment system, he declared in an interview with the Welt agency.

“If we disconnect Russia from Swift, there is a great danger that this system will collapse and we will have to switch to the Chinese payment system. By doing so, we will do ourselves serious harm,” he said.

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