After Russia launched its full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022, Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) repeatedly promised to wind down its business in Russia and sell or spin off its Russian subsidiary. AO Raiffeisenbank still operates in the Russian Federation, however, and remains the largest Western bank on the Russian market. It is not under EU or U.S. sanctions and has not been cut off from SWIFT, because a presence in Russia is not in itself an automatic trigger for those restrictions. RBI says it processes permitted international payments and is gradually shrinking the business. A study by the U.S. research firm Grizzly Research indicates that the drawn-out exit helped preserve a financial channel through which critical dual-use goods and technologies could reach Russia for the needs of the defense-industrial complex.
Selling RBI’s Russian subsidiary proved difficult: the deal requires approval from the Russian authorities, and the profits accumulated by the bank cannot be freely transferred to Austria. In 2024 a Russian court froze the shares of AO Raiffeisenbank, blocking a sale. Later about €2 billion was extracted from the group’s Russian entity in a case linked to the company Rasperia. Reuters, citing sources, reported that Russian officials resisted a sale in order to keep one of the few remaining financial bridges to Europe.
After other European banks reduced their presence, Raiffeisen remained an important channel for international payments, including settlements for Russian gas exports. In 2024 the European Central Bank demanded that RBI cut lending and payment operations in Russia. The group said it had reduced its loan book and restricted transactions, but AO Raiffeisenbank remained part of RBI.
On 17 September 2026, Grizzly Research published an analysis of Russian customs data covering 2022 through early 2025. Analysts identified 25,085 records worth $1.75 billion in which AO Raiffeisenbank’s code, 3292, appeared in the registration number of the foreign-trade contract. Of these, transactions worth $1.19 billion involved goods that, on the date of declaration, were subject to sanctions or export controls by the EU, the United States, the United Kingdom or Switzerland. A further $106.75 million related to items on the Common High Priority List that Western governments regard as critical to Russia’s defense industry.
The identified operations include machine-tool deliveries to companies linked to Russia’s defense sector. Sanctioned Pumori Northwest, which the United States has designated as a major supplier of machine tools to Russia’s defense industry, imported a CNC lathe from China for $624,000 in October 2024. After being added to the OFAC list, Promoil received a turning-milling center worth $462,000 from China’s Suzhou Always Machinery. In 2024–2025, DM Technologies imported more than $2.3 million in equipment from Sieglo Shanghai Precision Machinery. The link between these contracts and AO Raiffeisenbank is the code 3292.
The supply chains were not limited to China. German firm STC Steyr Wälzlager Deutschland appears in the customs records as the supplier of $224,000 in bearings to the Russian company Steir Smart Tek. The goods originated in Germany, but the trade was routed through Turkey. In another case, Italian-made electrical components worth $462,000 were shipped from Bulgaria to the Russian company PKF Telferkran. Other declarations list Chinese thermal imagers and Austrian optical sights that can have civilian uses but have already been found on Russian military equipment.
The most serious questions concern transactions with companies that were already under sanctions at the time. Grizzly Research identified at least 33 such companies in customs records tied to the bank’s code, totaling $49 million. They include metalworking-equipment supplier Alfa Machinery Group; Dubai-based Moto Export, which appeared in declarations three days after being added to the OFAC list; and Aurus, the maker of luxury presidential cars. RBI categorically rejected the study’s conclusions and told Reuters that some of the named companies had never been clients of the bank. That stance does not, however, resolve questions about the bank’s role in the operations that appear in the analyzed customs data.
European regulators did not stop these operations because of the split in powers and oversight among different institutions. The ECB demanded that RBI shrink its Russian business in general, but did not examine individual contracts and goods, while customs authorities saw only fragments of the supply chains. An employee in AO Raiffeisenbank’s currency-control unit told a Grizzly Research representative posing as a potential client that her unit does not check the customs codes of goods. As a result, operations through formally unsanctioned intermediaries in China, Turkey or the UAE could proceed without a full match of banking data, product characteristics and the end recipient’s established ties to Russia’s defense industry.
The Raiffeisen case shows how the gap among banking, customs and export controls may have helped keep open a channel for equipment destined for Russia’s defense industry. Contracts linked to machine tools, bearings, electronics and optics for sanctioned companies passed through RBI’s Russian subsidiary, while European regulators mostly demanded a general reduction of the bank’s Russian business. The published data give grounds for further review by the ECB, Austria’s FMA and the U.S. OFAC. Without coordinated control among banking, customs and sanctions authorities, Russia may continue to use similar financial channels to buy dual-use goods and equipment for its defense industry.
