From Bloomberg::

The U.K. will press European Union leaders to consider blocking Russian access to the SWIFT banking transaction system under an expansion of sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine, a British government official said.

“There’s no doubt that in the short term restricting Russian usage of SWIFT would be extremely disruptive to Russian financial and commercial activities,” said Richard Reid, a research fellow for finance and regulation at the University of Dundee in Scotland.

Russian economic authorities themselves accede to the increasing likelihood of recession, just as non-Russian forecasters. Economists’s beliefs that no further sanctions would be imposed, cited in the Bloomberg survey, are likely to be tested by new information regarding the incursion of Russian forces in Ukraine. (Note: the ruble has hit a new low, despite likely forex intervention; MICEX again down, 1.32%, RTS cash index, down 2.11%).

It seems no longer so implausible that the worst case scenario for the Russian economy, including a cumulative 5% decline in output (IIF, March 2014), becomes a reality.

Figure 1: Russian real GDP q/q growth rate (non-annualized).

Source: TradingEconomics. Last observation is for 2014Q1.