Russian Firms Face Mounting Payment Issues as Sanctions Bite (1)

Russian President Vladimir Putin is bucking Western efforts to isolate him internationally, meeting with more than 20 world leaders just since May. Russian businesses aren’t so lucky.

New US restrictions imposed in June to stem support for the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine have put local banks in countries that trade with Russia at a higher risk of so-called secondary penalties, increasingly delaying or disrupting payments to and from places like China and Turkey. That’s making it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to execute transactions, particularly with China, arguably Russia’s most important economic partner since the start of the 2022 war.

While ...