Ukraine’s ‘Kinetic Sanctions’ Disrupt Russian A7A5 Stablecoin Services: Elliptic

On the night of Oct. 7-8, Ukrainian drones struck a Yandex—or “Russia’s Google”—data center in Sasovo, sending shock waves across Russia. One of those shock waves hit A7A5, a Russian ruble-pegged stablecoin operating on Ethereum and Tron that was designed to evade Western sanctions. Meanwhile, another Yandex data center was struck during the same week.

$450 Million Market Cap and 14 Transfers per Day

Tom Robinson, chief scientist and co-founder of blockchain analysis company Elliptic, found that A7A5 transactions had collapsed immediately after the Ukrainian strikes. The stablecoin is available on exchanges that rely on Yandex’s services.

A graph shared by Robinson shows transactions plummeting immediately after the strikes.

Meanwhile, at the time of writing, Etherscan shows around 17,600 A7A5 holders on Ethereum, with just 18 transfers in the previous 24 hours. Tron has more than 30,700 holders and recorded 14 A7A5 transfers over the same period. Before Ukraine’s drone strikes—which have been referred to by some commentators as “kinetic sanctions”—the number stood at around 600 transfers per day.

According to Robinson, the remaining transactions mainly involve the stablecoin being swapped on decentralized exchanges, such as Uniswap. The platform removed A7A5 from its website in November 2025, but its underlying smart contracts continue to support the token.

Market data aggregators such as Coingecko and Coinmarketcap also show that the token’s trading volume now ranges from zero to around $1,500 per day, despite a market capitalization of approximately $455 million to $482 million.

“A7A5’s primary use is to bridge rubles to Tether’s USDT, primarily through the issuer’s own exchange. That service has been hosted by Yandex since Sep 2025. Before that it was hosted in Europe—but sanctions against A7A5 in Aug 2025 likely prompted a switch to Russian hosting,” Robinson explained.

From ‘Scheduled Work’ to ‘Technical Problems’

Meanwhile, on Oct. 8, official A7A5 Telegram channels announced that some services might be unavailable because of “scheduled” and “temporary technical work.” The next day, the explanation changed from “scheduled work” to “technical problems.”

On Oct. 14, A7A5 said it expected to resume operations “soon.” Users also asked how they could obtain promissory notes for orders they had already paid for. The company said the notes “can only be redeemed for rubles at the A7-Finance office.”

Users also complained that they had not received interest on their holdings since Oct. 9. The company promised to pay the full amount of interest owed for all missed days.

The support bot is also down, leaving users with only a phone number to contact the company.

“Well, the guys in the West earn their keep, since they knew where to strike…” one user said in an A7A5 Telegram chat.

The Ongoing Collapse

A7A5 is a ruble-pegged stablecoin issued in Kyrgyzstan and created by A7 LLC. The company claims the token is backed by deposits at sanctioned Russian state bank Promsvyazbank.

As Bitcoin.com News reported in June 2026, Stanislav Lazarev, A7’s first deputy general director for sales, said that “Western compliance pressure” would push Russia toward independent digital payments.

Meanwhile, in October, following the strikes, A7 launched a new service that lets businesses pay in USDT, while A7 sends the funds to their suppliers through ordinary SWIFT bank transfers. According to Robinson, this new service provides A7 “with much-needed USDT, which could be used to provide liquidity for its struggling ruble-backed stablecoin, A7A5.”

In July, Elliptic reported that average daily A7A5 transaction volumes had fallen to $24.3 million in June 2026, down 96% from the token’s July 2025 peak, as the U.S., U.K., and EU had imposed coordinated sanctions on the token.

Three crypto exchanges and two payment platforms come under new UK sanctions over suspected efforts to bypass restrictions on Russia.…