Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a series of sanctions against Russia on Friday, including the imposition of sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin, his chief of staff and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

“Furthermore, I confirm Canada’s support for removing Russia from the SWIFT payment system, an essential part of the global banking system,” he added.

Excluding Russian banks from SWIFT, a high-security network that connects thousands of financial institutions around the world, “would make it even more difficult for President Putin to finance his brutalities”, according to Trudeau.

“Canada is also announcing that we will impose additional sanctions on Belarus and its leaders for encouraging President Putin’s invasion of a free and sovereign nation,” he said.

According to Trudeau, these sanctions will target 57 people and are in addition to the “dozens of existing severe sanctions already imposed on the regime of Alexander Lukashenko for its repeated and systematic violations of human rights and decades of oppression of its own people”. .

This all comes after Russia’s assault on Ukraine, which began on Thursday and has spread across the country. Russian forces have attacked by land, sea and air, and are currently fighting to control of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.