Andrey Kostin, the CEO of Russia’s VTB bank, one of the country’s major state-controlled financial institutions, issued a statement yesterday announcing that VTB had become the first bank in the country to make transfers in yuan to China, completely outside the SWIFT global financial messaging system, which Russian banks cannot use due to the sanctions. “We are the first Russian bank to install an alternative cross-border bank transfer service with China and plan to increase the volume of these transactions by five times by next year,” he said. “The launch of the yuan transfer system is expected to significantly simplify the work of Russian companies and individuals with Chinese partners, increasing the popularity of the yuan in our country,” Kostin added.