Some Russian oil companies have stopped banking with sanctioned lenders including VTB and Sberbank and switched to those that do not face restrictions, including Rosbank, Unicredit and Raiffeisen, five people familiar with the matter told Reuters. The United States sanctioned five major Russian banks, including state-backed Sberbank (SBER.MM) and VTB (VTBR.MM) , which are widely used for financing oil and gas projects and facilitating energy trading, in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. While Russian energy companies are not subject to Western sanctions, those imposed on the Russian banks resulted in the suspension of payments to oil companies’ bank accounts as Western banks avoided doing business with them. “We haven’t been […]