President Putin met yesterday with Andrei Kostin, the CEO of Russia’s second-largest bank, VTB. Kostin reported to the Russian President that VTB bank is in good shape, posting profits since the fourth quarter of 2022, despite Western sanctions. He pointed to the bank’s steps towards “creating a new payments and settlements infrastructure involving rubles and currencies of friendly states” as a major reason for their success. We have been able to do this because VTB is present in the major Asian countries, such as China and India, as well as the CIS countries, he noted. (http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/71658 )
By such efforts, “we have probably become somewhat immune [to the sanctions] … and we have enhanced our sovereignty in this field.” That is key, he added, because the West is facing a 2008-like bank blowout. He told Putin: “Look at what is now happening in the United States. This is virtually the largest financial and banking crisis since 2008, and it is already spreading to Europe. This is what we have been talking about, that sanctions against Russia are a double-edged sword. In effect, by using sanctions against Russia, the West has demolished the global trade system and caused an inflation surge. Western attempts to resolve this problem by standard methods devalued bank assets, and we can see the result of this.”
Putin replied drily: “Perhaps what you have said about raising the level of independence and sovereignty is rather timely, considering greater negative trends in the U.S. banking system.”
Kostin agreed, telling Putin that he believes “that it is possible to considerably reshape the financial system in several years.”
