U.S. sanctions imposed on Moscow this month have complicated foreign trade operations for Russian banks, but they are gradually adapting to new realities, the chief financial officer of VTB, Russia’s second-largest lender, said Friday.
On June 12, the United States imposed Ukraine-related sanctions on the Moscow Stock Exchange, which stopped trading currency pairs with the dollar and the euro.
The US Treasury said it increased “the risk of secondary sanctions for foreign financial institutions that deal with the Russian war economy”, thereby threatening them with loss of access to the US financial system.
The VTB branch in Shanghai, the only representative office of a Russian bank in China, fell under sanctions.
VTB’s Chinese branch “is (currently) in a period of adaptation to new realities,” Dmitry Pyanov, VTB’s financial director, said on Friday, adding that the bank “will get through this.”
Mr Pyanov said the entire Russian banking system – which faced complications in international cooperation in the field of cross-border payments – had to adapt to new realities.
A person familiar with the situation at Chinese banks operating in Russia told Reuters on June 13 that Russian subsidiaries of Chinese banks had stopped processing settlements for trade between Russia and China in dollars and euros.
