The British government has imposed sanctions on three cryptocurrency exchanges and two payment platforms, after suspecting that they helped Russian entities evade the financial sanctions imposed on them.
The British Foreign Office said that three of these entities are linked to Kyrgyzstan, while two facilitated transactions with the Kremlin-backed A7 network. The ministry added that targeting these platforms aims to limit sanctioned entities’ ability to transfer and access funds.
According to the statement, the A7 financial network claimed to have transferred more than $90 billion over the past year, nearly half of Russia’s annual military spending. The move is part of a broader crackdown on infrastructure suspected of facilitating Russia-linked financial flows.
Chainalysis found that the two sanctioned payment platforms, Cryptomus and Heleket, received funds from thousands of illicit counterparties, with the number reaching 900 in a single month in late 2025. The data also indicated that this activity was not marginal, but involved a clearly expanding base of counterparties.
TokenSpot, a Kyrgyzstan-based exchange, was also linked to the A7 network. According to Chainalysis, TokenSpot, along with Grinex and Meer, received more than $308 million from a single deposit address associated with HTX.
In May, British authorities added Huobi Global, the operator of the HTX platform, to their sanctions package. HTX responded that the decision applied to Huobi Global as a separate legal entity, emphasizing that the online platform and users’ funds were unaffected.
For users and businesses operating in the sector, these developments mean that dealing with platforms or service providers on sanctions lists may increase regulatory and compliance risks, and could lead to additional checks or the restriction or blocking of certain transactions, depending on the jurisdiction and each platform’s policies.
Separately, CertiK reported that the ruble-backed stablecoin A7A5 had processed cumulative on-chain transactions worth $110 billion as of June, despite continuing Western sanctions.