The UK government has sanctioned three cryptocurrency exchanges and two payment platforms suspected of helping Russian entities circumvent financial sanctions, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) announced Thursday.

The measure cuts off the designated platforms from the UK financial system and makes it harder for sanctioned entities to move and access funds, the Foreign Ministry said. Three of the service providers are linked to Kyrgyzstan, and two facilitated transactions with the Kremlin-backed A7 network.

The scale of the network underpins the enforcement priority. The A7 financial network claimed to have moved more than $90 billion last year — nearly half of Russia's annual military expenditure, according to the FCDO.

What did on-chain analysis show?

Blockchain analytics platform Chainalysis found that two of the sanctioned payment processors, Cryptomus and Heleket, received funds from thousands of illicit counterparties. The exposure peaked at 900 entities within a single month in late 2025.

Chainalysis also determined that the Kyrgyzstani TokenSpot exchange, another designated platform tied to the A7 network, received funds alongside Grinex and Meer from the same HTX deposit address. The three platforms took in more than $308 million from that single address.

That deposit-address linkage connects Thursday's designations to the UK's May sanctions package, which included Huobi Global, the operator of the HTX exchange. HTX disputed the designation at the time, arguing it applies only to Huobi Global as a separate legal entity and that its online exchange and user funds remain unaffected.

Cointelegraph has approached TokenSpot, Cryptomus and Heleket for comment on the matter.

Why does the A7A5 stablecoin matter?

Separate from Thursday's designations, the ruble-backed A7A5 stablecoin processed $110 billion in cumulative on-chain transactions leading up to June, according to blockchain security firm CertiK. The figure shows continued growth despite Western sanctions pressure on the ecosystem surrounding it.

For compliance teams at exchanges and payment processors outside Russia, the designations raise the operational bar. Institutions with exposure to Cryptomus, Heleket, TokenSpot, Grinex or Meer now face screening obligations against the UK sanctions list, and counterparty relationships routed through shared deposit addresses — the pattern Chainalysis identified at HTX — carry direct regulatory risk.

The action also follows a broader European tightening. Italy's central bank recently ordered sanctions screening for crypto transfers, signaling that national regulators across the region are formalizing transaction-monitoring expectations for crypto-asset service providers.

What comes next?

The FCDO has signaled that cutting off platforms used for sanctions evasion remains an active enforcement track. With the A7 network's claimed volumes and A7A5's continued on-chain growth both documented by analytics firms, further designations targeting the infrastructure around Russian illicit finance — including exchange operators and payment rails linked to shared deposit addresses — remain a plausible next step for UK and allied regulators.