Russians actively use non-traditional currencies to make payments bypassing sanctions, they give the greatest preference to the USDT token, the turnover of which, according to rough estimates, is USDT5-7 billion monthly, said presidential commissioner for sanctions policy Vladyslav Vlasiuk.

"First of all, they like USDT, because it is less volatile and easier to move. We estimate that the volume of use of this crypto token by Russians, according to rough estimates, is about USDT5-7 billion monthly," he said in an interview with the Interfax-Ukraine agency.

According to the commissioner, this is an insignificant figure, if we take into account the overall volume of trade in the Russian Federation, but it still gives the Russians room for significant maneuvers to bypass the established restrictions.

"Cryptocurrency, stablecoin, USDT, in a word - non-traditional currency. Thanks, among other things, to insider information, we have a lot of information about what is happening in this market: how the Russians buy up everything they can buy in the Central Asian markets in these areas to supply sanctioned products," Vlasiuk shared.

According to him, information about the use of crypto assets by Russians to bypass sanctions has been actively monitored since August last year and taken into account when communicating with partners.

"As a result, in December last year, the UK made a sanctions decision against a group that was circumventing sanctions through cryptocurrencies. The Americans were also very interested in this area. We had detailed dialogues with the US and UK teams about how sanctions are circumvented using crypto," the commissioner said.

Vlasiuk suggested that, given this, similar sanctions decisions should be expected in the future.

"To be honest, I don't see how Russians will be able to use non-traditional forms of money in the long term, because all this is relatively easy to technically track and stop," he summed up.