EU sanctions EXMO and 16 other crypto services in 21st package against Russia

The European Union has added 17 crypto companies to its 21st sanctions package, saying they help Russia circumvent earlier restrictions. For high-risk payment providers, the useful part is not the politics; it is the list of rails and entities now explicitly in the crosshairs.

1. Among the named firms are HTX, a crypto exchange created in China and registered in the Seychelles, and EXMO, a UK-registered exchange. The EU also listed ruble exchange services Rapira, ABCeX and BitPapa, the exchange aggregator Exnode, and the Belarusian service WhiteBird.
2. The sanctions list also includes the African arms of A7, the company behind the ruble stablecoin A7A5: A7 Nigeria and A7 Africa. In total, four companies from the Kyrgyzstan-registered A7 group were added to the EU blacklist, along with Leonid Shumakov, the project head of A7, who was hit with personal sanctions.
3. Other restricted platforms include Aifory Pro, NoOneCrypto, Tradex, Monease, and PilotFinance. The measures against the crypto platforms take effect on 23 August.
4. The new EU package also bans Belarusian citizens and residents from owning, controlling, or managing companies in the Eurozone that operate under the EU’s MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets) crypto license framework. That is a compliance issue, not a footnote, for any PSP or acquirer that touches EU crypto flows with Belarus links in the ownership or control chain.
5. HTX had already been sanctioned by the UK. According to analysts at the US blockchain company TRM Labs, the exchange continued serving Russian clients and reworked its infrastructure to get around sanctions, including frequent changes to hot wallets and deposit addresses on Tron, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, and Solana.