If we "cut" off SWIFT it would hurt Europe and the States just as much as it would Russia because this is how all money moves. Think paying for natural gas, oil, commodities, etc etc.
Isn't that kind of how all sanctions work? Eliminating trade hurts both parties equally, though the effects will be felt less to the bigger party.
Nitpick: doesn’t have to be equally - one party in a trade can gain more than the other, not necessarily proportionally to size (but both end up better off than not trading). The key is to sanction areas where the losses hurt the other side more than you.
That's... that's the point. We should not be paying them for gas. We should not be funding their war.
Germany shut down their nuclear plants and built a expensive pipeline from Russia to use nat gas instead. Why?! This mistake could be one of the biggest in EU in the 2020s