Raiffeisen Bank International to process Turkish gas payments to Russia: BankTrack and B4Ukraine response, 28 May 2025

According to reports by Middle East Eye (MEE) on Friday, a Turkish government official has confirmed that Turkey intends to route future natural gas import payments to Russia through Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI), following a tightening of US sanctions on Russia’s Gazprombank.

MEE reports that agreement will see RBI process more than €7 billion in annual Turkish gas payments to Russia - a substantial contribution to the Russian federal budget, 30% of which derived from oil and gas-related revenues in 2024. It will also likely enable Turkey to continue importing Russian natural gas through the TurkStream pipeline, much of which passes onward to EU countries. According to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, Europe continued to import ca. €510 million per month in Russian pipeline gas via Turkstream between January and April 2025.

Less than two weeks before MEE reported on this deal, the European Union released its “roadmap towards ending Russian energy imports”, a plan to phase out EU gas imports from Russia by 2027, which cites the urgency of ending the “financial support to Russian war economy” enabled by these imports. The continued role that RBI apparently seeks to play in facilitating Turkey’s continued import of natural gas from Russia risks establishing a crucial lifeline for Russia’s gas exports in contradiction of the EU’s roadmap. In prolonging a further revenue stream for the Kremlin, the alleged agreement illustrates the crucial financial architecture that some EU financial institutions continue to provide to Russia for prolonging the illegal war on Ukraine...