UK sanctions three crypto exchanges and two payment platforms tied to Russian illicit funds

The UK has sanctioned three cryptocurrency exchanges and two payment platforms over suspected links to Russian entities bypassing financial sanctions. For high-risk PSPs, the practical point is simple: this is another reminder that crypto rails connected to sanctioned ecosystems can become a sanctions problem fast, especially when they touch payment processors and exchange deposit addresses.

1. The UK government said Thursday that the five service providers were linked to Kyrgyzstan, and that two of them facilitated transactions with the Kremlin-backed A7 network. The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) said cutting off these platforms makes it harder for sanctioned entities to move and access funds.
2. The FCDO added that the A7 financial network claimed to have moved more than $90 billion last year, or nearly half of Russia’s annual military expenditure. That is the scale the UK is aiming at here: not a fringe wallet cluster, but payment infrastructure that can move meaningful volumes.
3. Blockchain analytics platform Chainalysis said two of the sanctioned payment processors, Cryptomus and Heleket, received funds from thousands of illicit counterparties, peaking at 900 entities within a single month in late 2025. In sanctions screening terms, that is a very busy risk graph.
4. Another sanctioned platform, the Kyrgyzstani TokenSpot exchange, was also tied to the A7 network. Chainalysis said TokenSpot, along with Grinex and Meer, received over $308 million from the same HTX deposit address.
5. In May, UK authorities included Huobi Global, the operator of crypto exchange HTX, in their sanctions package. HTX pushed back, saying the designation applies only to Huobi Global as a separate legal entity and that its online exchange and user funds remain unaffected.

Separately, CertiK said the Russian ruble-backed A7A5 stablecoin processed $110 billion in cumulative onchain transactions leading up to June, despite Western sanctions. For PSPs and exchanges, that is the usual headache: sanctioned flow does not disappear, it reroutes through new entities, new labels, and the same old deposit addresses.