This sanctioned Russian stablecoin claims it processes billions, but blockchain analysts disagree

“We truly don’t think there is large-scale, authentic usage of A7A5 outside of A7,” Keegan said in an email, referring to the token’s issuer. He added that transaction volumes routinely collapse on weekends because much of the activity appears tied to business-to-business transfers involving the Russia-linked exchange Grinex.

Meanwhile, Tom Robinson, co-founder of another blockchain analytics firm, Elliptic, also said the token has lost momentum. He said that monthly transaction volumes have fallen by more than 90% since January and are down 96% from their peak last year, following sanctions imposed by the U.S., the European Union and the United Kingdom, as well as the collapse of Grinex earlier this year.

“The cherry-picked trading and transaction figures provided by A7A5 are consistent with Elliptic’s analysis,” Robinson said. “However, they conceal the obvious trend: that A7A5 is failing in its goal of enabling Russian sanctions evasion.”

A7A5’s Ogienko denied these claims and said that because the token’s activity mostly takes place in DeFi, it is not fully captured by major crypto data sites. “These outdated principles and metrics do not provide users around the world with objective information about A7A5,” he told CoinDesk in a statement via Telegram.

He said data providers, including CoinMarketCap, CoinGecko and DeFiLlama rely too heavily on centralized exchange data, creating what he claimed “a generally discriminatory approach, contrary to the principles of the United Nations.”

Neither A7A5’s nor the blockchain analytics firms’ claims were independently verified by CoinDesk.

A7A5, a ruble-pegged stablecoin backed by deposits at Promsvyazbank, a Russian bank hit by Western sanctions, was rolled out in Kyrgyzstan in early 2025. The Russian-backed stablecoin was allegedly developed specifically as a means for Russia to evade Western sanctions. Last year, the EU, U.K. and U.S. sanctioned A7A5 as well.

Meanwhile, Russia recently sanctioned British teenager Alexander Browder for his role in exposing the alleged use of ruble-pegged stablecoin A7A5 in funding the war effort against Ukraine. The 17-year-old penned a report for foreign policy and national security think tank The Henry Jackson Society, which the Russian Foreign Ministry described as spreading “defamatory speculations and false information.”

Kaitlin Martin, a sanctions and national security specialist, said A7A5 remains largely confined to a Russia-linked ecosystem because Western sanctions have prevented most global trading venues from listing the token.

She said users can still swap A7A5 into other cryptocurrencies through Russia-linked services, allowing funds to enter the broader crypto ecosystem for cross-border payments, including commodities trade.

While the dispute touches a sensitive subject of how Russian businesses are evading the sanctions put on them by the Western economy, it underscores the difficulty of measuring crypto activities that fall outside of centralized exchanges. Particularly when the token in question is designed to help users avoid global sanctions and trade on DeFi exchanges.