Western governments spent three years building what they believed was an airtight financial blockade around Russia, severing its banks from SWIFT, freezing sovereign reserves, and barring major institutions from clearing dollar transactions.

And according to British authorities, Russia may have spent much of that same period engineering an alternative financial system designed to circumvent it entirely.

On May 26, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office sanctioned 18 entities and individuals, including Huobi (HTX), a Justin Sun-advised exchange that processed $3.3 trillion in trading volume in 2025, and a Kyrgyzstan-linked stablecoin issuer, for allegedly helping Russia evade Western restrictions.

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