The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has banned banks from accepting Russian rubles from citizens to replenish deposit accounts. This is stated in the decree of the National Bank ( .pdf ), which comes into force on November 21, 2021.

The document says that banks “are forbidden to carry out cash transactions to receive cash in foreign currency of the occupying state for crediting to the deposit (deposit) accounts of individuals.”

October 19 received the decision Ukrainian banks, according to the publication “Strana.ua” , one of the first drew attention to the document. The unnamed sources of the publication in the NBU said that the restriction applies only to the deposit accounts of the population.

At the same time, a high-ranking source “Strana.ua” in one of the banks of Ukraine said that banks are preparing to stop accepting rubles on any accounts, including current and card accounts. Officially, the banks did not report this.

In recent years, ruble deposits have ceased to be popular in Ukraine, writes the Ukrainian edition of the Ministry of Finance. According to the NBU, at the beginning of September 2021, citizens had 321 million hryvnias (870.4 million rubles) on accounts in Russian rubles opened with banks in Ukraine, of which three million hryvnias (8.1 million rubles) were on deposits. For comparison: at the end of 2013, 889 million hryvnias (2.4 billion rubles at the current exchange rate) were kept in ruble accounts, including 733 million hryvnias (almost 2 billion rubles) on deposits.

In 2017, the National Bank of Ukraine banned local banks from conducting cash, including currency exchange, operations with banknotes and coins of the Central Bank of Russia, which depict objects of the Crimea. This limitation, among other things, applies to bills of 200 rubles with the image of Sevastopol, which were issued in 2017.

(c)MEDUZA 2021