Ukrainian authorities are targeting Russian cryptocurrency exchange websites and wallets.
The Ukrainian financial monitoring agency has limited access to a number of online cryptocurrency exchanges based in Russia. The regulatory agency said in a report that some of the cryptocurrency trading platforms are cooperating with sanctioned Russian banks.
The State Financial Monitoring Service (SFMS), a branch of Ukraine's financial intelligence, has released a special report on its operations in 2022. In addition to its peacetime operations, including as preventing money laundering, the agency stated that it has helped the country's defense effort as part of the continuing struggle with Russia.
The watchdog revealed in a document issued this week that its personnel had joined forces with colleagues from the Ministry of Digital Transformation and renowned Ukrainian crypto logists. They were able to identify Russian crypto exchanges linked to sanctioned Russian financial institutions, including Russia's largest bank, Sber.
The Ukrainian financial authority did not disclose the number of these platforms or their domain names, but stated that the goal was to completely shut them down.
In addition, the SFMS created a mechanism for the "blocking of crypto wallets of the Russian Federation," which is unclear if it refers to Russian wallets in general or those tied to the government in Moscow.
The state service recalled that last year it approached Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, proposing moves "to stop Russian Federation aggressiveness in the virtual assets market" and block peer-to-peer transactions for customers of different Russian banks and payment systems.
"Other practical actions linked to the barring of Russian crypto assets and activities by Russian citizens have been adopted," the agency noted, without going into further detail. It has been working with almost 140 nations' financial authorities on the issue, while cutting connections with regulators in Russia and Belarus.
