A blow to Moscow. Since the beginning of this year, Russian companies have been having problems with payments in Turkey and China. The banks of these two countries stopped processing some of the Russian payments. According to the data of the website OhMySwift (deals with the analysis of international interbank transfers through the SWIFT system) from December 2023 the majority of bank transfers from Russia to Turkey did not take place, while in China almost everything froze.

This is related to the threat of sanctions from the US and the EU, writes the Russian service of the BBC, noting that the situation with payment restrictions can affect the import of goods into Russia.

Russia despite all the sanctions imposed against it, continues to buy goods abroad, which are used by the military-industrial complex. For this purpose it creates complex networks of intermediaries which are not easy to trace.

The US and the EU have been trying to find ways in recent months to block these flows of goods to Russia. Kit seems, writes the Russian service of the BBC, that they found in these networks the weak link, the banks in other countries which process the payments made for the import of goods into Russia.

At the end of 2023 The executive order of the US president, which threatens to deprive foreign banks of their access to the US financial system because of their relations with major Russian trades, went into effect. Banks that help transport or participate in the shipment of major goods destined for the military-industrial complex will face account freezes or severe sanctions on US correspondent accounts.

In mid-January, the Bloomberg agency wrote that China’s state-owned banks are introducing restrictions on the transactions of their Russian clients in connection with the decree on secondary sanctions.

In early February, as the Russian financial newspaper Vedomosrti wrote, the Chinese bank Zhejiang Chouzhou Commercial Bank informed its customers that it was suspending transactions with any Russian or Belarusian organizations. According to a source in the Vedomosti newspaper, at least three of the four major Chinese banks, Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, have tightened controls
In mid-January, Turkish companies exporting products to Russia reported problems with payments due to checks and inspections by authorities, a spokesman for the Turkish Exporters’ Assembly told Reuters.

The Russian newspaper Kommersant simultaneously reported, citing sources, that Turkish banks are refusing to cooperate with Russian banks for fear of US sanctions. According to the newspaper’s sources, by the end of December, settlement problems had spread to almost all Turkish banks, including Nurol Bank, with which about 40 Russian credit institutions cooperated, and Emlak Bank.

“Since US President Joe Biden’s executive order was issued to impose secondary sanctions on banks that facilitate RussianTurkey became one of the first countries whose banks they began to close correspondent relations with the Russian Federation… disconnection from dollar payments is not something that any bank wants,” a Russian banker told the Kommersant newspaper.