Russian officials insist sanctions aren’t hurting business, yet companies continue to face problems.
After the United States tightened sanctions, Russian banks have struggled to process payments through Chinese lenders - and the issue persists. Two meetings between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping over the past year haven’t improved the situation, Norilsk Nickel Vice President Anton Berlin said at the Eastern Economic Forum, according to The Moscow Times.
He said that despite official assurances that cross-border settlement issues had been resolved, payments continue to get stuck at banks for weeks.
“As soon as a new sanctions package comes out - even if it has nothing to do with our products or our company - Chinese banks pause for 2–3–4 weeks to study the text, and payments just hang,” he complained.
Chinese banks are also not opening letters of credit for Russian goods. Berlin said fixing the problem would take at least two years and would require increasing the secrecy of Russia’s international transactions - and, in an ideal scenario, creating an international payments system independent of the West.
“Essentially, we need a cross-border payments system that is understandable to national regulators… Until now, everyone talked about increasing the transparency of financial settlements, but anonymity is now becoming an important aspect as well - transparency should be very limited to the regulators it concerns,” Berlin said.
Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would speak “today or in the coming days” with U.S. President Donald Trump. He plans to raise the issue of sanctions pressure on Russia if there is no meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents.
