NBU: four Russian banks' subsidiaries in Ukraine have potential buyers

"There are potential buyers for the two large and two small banks with Russian capital," she said.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukraine had committed to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to protect Russian state-owned banks' subsidiaries in Ukraine from illegal actions.

On April 7, the National Bank of Ukraine called on law enforcement agencies to ensure continuous operation of the said banks' branches in keeping with the law. This was due to numerous illegal actions in the country initiated by the military and political grouping National Corps, which systematically destabilizes the work of banks with state Russian capital and blocks access of Ukrainians to their funds kept in such banks.

Read alsoRaiffeisen Bank Aval CEO Lavrenchuk reportedly agrees to head NBU - mediaThe National Corps political movement stated that it intended to act independently to stop the activities of Russian banks in Ukraine after April 10, and called on Ukrainian citizens, the depositors of those banks, to immediately withdraw their funds from their accounts in these financial institutions.

In response to this statement, Russian Sberbank, which on March 27 announced the conclusion of a contract on the sale of its Ukrainian-based subsidiary to a consortium of foreign investors, said it expected to leave the Ukrainian market in accordance with current legislation. Sberbank also claimed it would regard aggressive actions against its subsidiaries as intentional infliction of harm to the interests of its Ukrainian clients and the state of Ukraine.

Read alsoNBU reports tips law enforcers of suspicious transactions by customers of 18 banks in Q1 2017March 16, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko signed a decree bringing into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) on imposing sanctions for a one-year period in respect of subsidiaries of Russian state-owned banks, namely Sberbank, VS Bank, Prominvestbank, VTB Bank, and BM Bank.