Following the 2022 sanctions packages, RUB cross-border payments largely vanished from western correspondent banks. By 2026 a residual flow continues via specific corridors and narrowly-permitted use cases.
Excluded Russian banks: Sberbank, VTB, Sovcombank, Gazprombank, Otkritie, Promsvyazbank, Rosselkhozbank and others lost SWIFT access in 2022 and have not been reinstated.
Continuing Russian banks: a smaller group (Alfa-Bank prior to its exclusion, Tinkoff, and some smaller regional banks) retained SWIFT access for limited periods. Status changes frequently — verify current sanctions before any wire.
Allowed flows: humanitarian aid, energy payments where exemptions apply, certain agricultural-product flows, embassy operations. All require licensed channels.
In practice: most legitimate RUB cross-border flow now routes via banks in Türkiye, UAE, Kazakhstan, or via the Chinese yuan / mBridge experimental corridors. Each path has its own compliance complexity.
For non-RUB payments to Russian counterparties (USD, EUR), the constraint is which Russian bank can receive. The pool is small.
For tracking: Ohmyfin queries the SWIFT GPI network. Excluded Russian banks do not appear; payments to allowed Russian banks track normally.
Limited — depends on your bank's policies and the receiving Russian bank. Some western banks allow small personal remittances; others have stopped entirely.
mBridge (BIS/PBoC/HKMA project) is a CBDC platform with Russian participation considered. As of 2026, still experimental.
CIPS is for CNY. CIPS is not a RUB substitute. Russia has its own SPFS (System for Transfer of Financial Messages) for internal and bilateral flows.
Yes — significant civil and criminal penalties under OFAC, EU and UK sanctions. Banks block flows that would attempt this.