The US government has asked banks to continue servicing several Russian companies.

The US Treasury Department and the State Department have secretly asked the largest American banks, including JPMorgan and Citigroup, not to refuse cooperation with certain strategic Russian companies, writes Bloomberg. In this way, the country’s leadership seeks to minimize the adverse consequences of the sanctions regime and avoid a “global economic catastrophe”. In particular, banks were asked to continue providing essential services – money transfers and conversion into dollars – to companies that were not directly sanctioned.