Russia’s War in Ukraine

Understanding the conflict four years on.

In early March, the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan made a bold move, announcing that it was preparing to take the European Union to court. A few days earlier, the bloc had threatened to ban exports of sensitive dual-use goods to Kyrgyzstan in order to prevent their reexport to Russia—a proposal that enraged Kyrgyz officials, who fear that could harm their country’s reputation as Central Asia’s most law-abiding, Western-friendly state. The EU’s concerns about covert shipments of dual-use goods to Russia from Kyrgyzstan are valid, but they may well obscure an even larger issue. Over the past year, Moscow has developed a crypto-based sanctions-evading channel powered by the Russian fintech company A7 and the ruble-linked cryptocurrency A7A5. Part of these flows are routed through Kyrgyzstan.

Western sanctions cut off their targets from global finance, including the SWIFT messaging network, cross-border correspondent banking relationships, and clearing mechanisms for dollar payments. For sanctioned economies, the workaround is obvious: developing Western-proof financial channels. This is what the Kremlin set out to do in late 2024, when it supported the creation of A7, a Moscow-based start-up that specializes in cryptocurrencies. The firm looks innocuous on paper, but scratch beneath the surface, and the Kremlin’s fingerprints appear everywhere. Fugitive Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor founded A7 after Russia granted him citizenship. The state-owned bank Promsvyazbank, which serves Russian defense firms, controls 49 percent of A7. To underline the Kremlin’s interest in the venture, Russian President Vladimir Putin attended a virtual ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opening of A7’s Vladivostok branch in September 2025.

In early March, the Central Asian state of Kyrgyzstan made a bold move, announcing that it was preparing to take the European Union to court. A few days earlier, the bloc had threatened to ban exports of sensitive dual-use goods to Kyrgyzstan in order to prevent their reexport to Russia—a proposal that enraged Kyrgyz officials, who fear that could harm their country’s reputation as Central Asia’s most law-abiding, Western-friendly state. The EU’s concerns about covert shipments of dual-use goods to Russia from Kyrgyzstan are valid, but they may well obscure an even larger issue. Over the past........

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