The UK sanctions Huobi and ruble stablecoin issuers, and first uses bank-level sanctions against crypto exchanges

Comparatively, the British Foreign Office imposed sanctions on 18 entities and individuals, accusing them of helping Russia evade restrictions and funding the Russian-Ukrainian war. The targets of the sanctions include the crypto exchange Huobi Global S.A. (HTX operator), Rapira Group, Bitpapa, and the Kyrgyz affiliate “virtual asset issuer” — which issues a gold-backed stablecoin USDKG.

For the first time, the British side applied section 17A of the “Russian Sanctions Regulations” to crypto exchanges, requiring British financial institutions to freeze relevant funds, trace transactions, and conduct compliance reviews of transactions across multi-hop blockchains. Blockchain analysis company Elliptic pointed out that HTX has an annual transaction volume of about 3.3 trillion US dollars and is suspected of providing services to the Russian A7 payment network and Garantex (later renamed Grinex), which was previously sanctioned. The British side said that the Kremlin-supported A7 payment network transferred more than 90 billion US dollars last year for oil revenue settlement and military procurement. The sanctions are effective immediately.