Five Crypto Exchange Platforms Help Russia Circumvent Sanctions

After the closure of Garantex, US authorities hoped to have cut a major channel for circumventing Russian sanctions. But the reality is far more persistent. According to a report published by the blockchain analysis company Elliptic, five new crypto exchange platforms have taken over, often from the same offices, with the same networks.

A ghost network that grows instead of disappearing

The Elliptic report, published this Saturday, hits like an electric shock. The blockchain analysis company blockchain reveals that five crypto exchange platforms, mostly still unsanctioned, now openly allow Russian entities to bypass Western financial restrictions.

The closure of Garantex in March 2025, after the seizure of its domain names by US authorities, did not end the problem. It simply redistributed it. ABCeX, Exmo, Bitpapa, Rapira, and Aifory Pro each in their own way absorbed part of the illicit volume Garantex handled.

ABCeX is the most concerning. Indeed, this platform operates from the Federation Tower in Moscow, the same building that housed Garantex. It is said to have processed at least 11 billion dollars in crypto, with significant flows to Garantex and Aifory Pro, another actor in this network.

The case of Exmo is perhaps the most striking. The platform had officially announced its departure from the Russian market after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Yet, blockchain analysis tells a very different story: its Western and Russian entities share the same custody wallet infrastructure. As a result, Exmo conducted over 19.5 million dollars of direct transactions with sanctioned entities, including Garantex, Grinex, and Chatex.

Increasingly sophisticated circumvention mechanisms

Each platform has developed its own techniques to stay under the radar. Bitpapa, the only one sanctioned by OFAC in March 2024, constantly changes wallet addresses to evade monitoring systems. About 9.7% of its outgoing flows went to sanctioned targets.

Rapira, a Georgian-registered platform with an office in Moscow, has conducted over 72 million dollars in direct transactions with Grinex, a sanctioned platform. Russian authorities themselves reportedly raided its offices at the end of 2025, suspecting capital flight to Dubai.

As for Aifory Pro, its model is particularly audacious. It offers virtual payment cards funded in USDT to allow Russian users to access blocked services like Airbnb or ChatGPT. The platform operates from Moscow, Dubai, and Turkey, and reportedly transferred nearly 2 million dollars to Abantether, an Iranian exchange platform.

The overall figures confirm this trend. Chainalysis reports that illicit crypto addresses received a record amount of 154 billion dollars in 2025. The Russian stablecoin A7A5, pegged to the ruble, alone would have accounted for 93.3 billion dollars in transactions.

In sum, the closure of Garantex did not extinguish the fire, it scattered it. In view of this observation, the European Union is now considering a general ban on all crypto transactions with Russia. A response that seems urgent, but whose effectiveness remains to be proven against such an adaptable network.