The war in Ukraine – a crash test for a world without SWIFT: Chronicle of a visible war and an invisible revolution
The thought of facts by Hubert Marlin Elingui Jr.
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Editorial
The war in Ukraine – a crash test for a world without SWIFT: Chronicle of a visible war and an invisible revolution
The thought of facts by Hubert Marlin Elingui Jr.
Flashmag! Issue 168 January 2026
February 24, 2022, at dawn, the images were broadcast around the world. Columns of tanks advancing through the fog. Explosions on the outskirts of Kyiv. Civilians fleeing with a few bags, leaving behind their homes, photos, and memories. That morning, history seemed to be repeating itself: another war on European soil. But while the cameras were filming the fighting, another war was beginning— without bombs, without uniforms, without visible victims, but with equally profound consequences.
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A silent, abstract war, almost incomprehensible to the general public: the war on the global financial order.
For Ukraine has not only become a military battlefield. It has also become, despite itself, the testing ground for a historic shift: a full-scale test of whether the world is capable of functioning outside the Western financial system, dominated by the dollar and SWIFT.