On Thursday, Russia’s No. 2 lender VTB (VTBR.MM) said that it will boost the number of countries to which retail customers can send money from 11 to 25, with India and Turkey being the primary new destinations.
Soon after Moscow pushed tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the West imposed broad sanctions, which included cutting VTB off from transactions in key global currencies and blocking its access to the worldwide SWIFT payments system. VTB was particularly heavily impacted by these sanctions.
“The key destinations in the outlook for this year will be India and Turkey,” said Anatoly Pechatnikov, the Deputy President-Chairman of VTB’s management board.
In Russia, reportage of Russian military activities in Ukraine is prohibited.
“With whom our country has established partnership relations and where the tourist flow is now directed,” said Pechatnikov. “The outlook for this year is very positive.”
Last week, the chief executive officer of VTB, Andrei Kostin, gave an interview to Reuters in which he predicted that the hegemony of the United States dollar would soon come to an end.
This prediction comes as the Chinese yuan strengthens and the rest of the world recognizes the danger posed by the West’s unsuccessful attempt to bring Russia to its knees over the situation in Ukraine.
Kostin said that VTB was aiming to facilitate convenient payment options for Russian citizens traveling outside of the country.
Following the Kazakh tenge with 39% and the yuan with 14% of VTB’s soft currency cross-border transfers in the first five months of this year, the Belarusian rouble accounted for 43% of those transactions.