The recent financial sanctions imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine are threatening to weaken the dominance of the U.S. petrodollar as the world currency, said First Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to The Financial Times. The sanctions may result in a more fragmented international monetary system, warned Gopinath. She had previously said that the sanctions against Russia would not foreshadow the demise of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency and that the Ukraine crisis would slow growth, but not cause a global recession. The United States, the EU, and the Group of Seven nations have hit Russia with a bundle of heavy sanctions and blocked the country from using SWIFT, the global communications service that clears international financial transactions, virtually cutting it off from the global financial markets and international trade. The United States also froze $630 billion in assets held in …