The Russian ruble-backed A7A5 stablecoin continued to grow despite Western sanctions, processing more than $110 billion in cumulative onchain transactions, according to CertiK.
CertiK said A7A5 captured about 43% of the global non-US dollar stablecoin market, and that its holder count rose from 13,000 to 29,000 wallets between February 2025 and May 2026.
The security company described A7A5 as one of the clearest examples of a sanctions-evasion stablecoin ecosystem, linking it to Russian cross-border settlement companies.
The growth highlights the limits of Western sanctions against blockchain-based payment systems, including the European Union’s 19th sanctions package, adopted on Oct. 23, 2025, which prohibited transactions involving A7A5 from Nov. 12. CertiK said the reserve structure places key assets outside direct Western enforcement reach.
A7A5 cumulative activity, all-time chart. Source: CertiK
A7A5 was issued in January 2025 by Old Vector LLC, a Kyrgyz entity acting on behalf of the Russian cross-border-settlement firm A7 LLC, which is co-owned by Moldovan-Russian oligarch Ilan Shor and Russian state-owned defense sector lender Promsvyazbank.
Russian authorities later recognized A7A5 under the country’s digital financial asset framework.
The stablecoin recorded $11.2 billion in trading volume across A7A5/RUB and $6.1 billion in A7A5/USDT trades, primarily through Grinex, which is the successor to Garantex, the platform that previously functioned as a laundering venue for Conti, Black Basta, LockBit and some illicit funds attributed to North Korean-linked actors, including $30 million from the 2022 Horizon Bridge hack sent to Garantex in February 2023.
US Secret Service seized the Garantex domain in March 2025, while Tether froze approximately $28 million in USDt (USDT) held by Garantex-controlled wallets.
A7A5 was designed to replicate some of USDT’s stablecoin utility while keeping issuance, reserves and freezing authority outside Western-controlled infrastructure.
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Can Western sanctions curb A7A5’s circulation?
The creators of the ruble-backed stablecoin have designed it without a centralized kill switch, meaning that the smart contracts responsible for wallet and fund freezes are controlled entirely by its Russian and Kyrgyz developers, according to Jonathan Riss, OSINT and blockchain intelligence analyst at CertiK.
The stablecoin’s reserves also sit in Central Asian banking networks, predominantly in Kyrgyzstan and in the Russian banking system, meaning that the funds are outside the reach of Western sanctions.
A7A5 also relies on a distributed distribution model through decentralized finance (DeFi) liquidity pools such as Curve and Uniswap to prevent getting frozen by centralized exchanges, CertiK’s Riss told Cointelegraph, adding:
“While Western regulators cannot directly rewrite the Ethereum or Tron blockchain to erase A7A5, the EU’s 19th package and parallel US/UK actions target the physical and digital choke points.”
The stablecoin’s creators designed A7A5 with careful consideration of the above three “immunities” to evade sanctions that crippled their previous evasion methods, such as Tether’s USDT, Riss said.
A7A5 network chart. Source: CertiK
Shor owns 51% of A7 LLC as the majority owner. He served as a former Moldovan parliament member until 2017, when he was convicted by a Moldovan court in connection with a 2014 theft of around $1 billion from three Moldovan Banks. He fled Moldova in 2019 and obtained Russian citizenship.
He was sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison in 2023. He currently resides in Moscow.
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