LONDON – JPMorgan, which manages the most popular emerging market bond indexes (NYSE:), is conducting a survey of investors to determine whether Russia’s foreign and local debt should be excluded from the benchmarks.

The Wall Street Bank asked its investors to participate in a poll called “Survey Monkey,” which was seen by Reuters. They were asked to decide whether certain sovereign or corporate hard-currencies, rouble-denominated bond and securities should remain or be removed.

People who anticipate the securities being removed will be asked if they would prefer to have them taken out at either the end or middle of April. Answers must be received by Sunday at midnight.

JPMorgan has not yet responded to my request for comment regarding the survey.

Following the attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2018, Western nations have put a broad range of sanctions on Russia.

Russia refers to its actions in Ukraine as a “special operations” and says it isn’t meant to occupy any territory. Its purpose is to degrade the military capabilities of its southern neighbor, capture dangerous nationalists, and destroy their military capability.

JPMorgan is the operator of the popular family of soft-currency, sovereign indexes (EMBI) and a counterpart in corporate debt CEMBI. GBIEM is the benchmark for emerging-currency local debt. The JESG index is governed by ESG (environmental, social and governance) factors.

According to bank information assets of $842 million are benchmarked against the indexes. Russia is ranked at 0.89% on the EMBIG Diversified and at 1.03% in the ESG versions of the EMBIG Diversified.

JPMorgan placed Russia under index watch March 1, after the imposition of sanctions.

JPMorgan is currently reviewing the debt of Russian ally Belarus in order to remove it from its ESG Index suite. This country was condemned for its violent crackdowns on the ground surrounding the 2020 election dispute and subsequent skyjacking an opposition journalist.