A new report released by B4Ukraine, Squeezing Putin, and the KSE Institute has found that international corporations continued to make significant contributions to Russia’s wartime budget in 2023. The report, which analyses financial data relating to 1,600 multinational enterprises, finds that foreign companies’ tax contributions in Russia totalled $41.6bn in the 2022-2023 period – equivalent to one-third of the Russian military budget in 2025.

The finance sector was found to be the largest contributor, having paid $1.15 billion in profit taxes to the Russian government in 2023 alone. Though the report notes that most international banks have fully withdrawn or suspended services in the Russian market, it finds that a handful of banks continue to play an outsized role in enabling Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI), in particular, was found to be the largest single corporate taxpayer in Russia by far in 2023. RBI’s Russian tax contributions in 2023 totalled $491 million - more than twice those of the second-largest corporate taxpayer, and more than the tax contributions of all other international banks put together.

Out of the top 20 corporate tax contributors identified in the report, five were banks, underscoring the vital role of the financial sector in enabling Russia’s war of aggression. Besides RBI, the report named Italy’s UniCredit, Hungary’s OTP, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), and US-based Citigroup in its list of the most significant corporate enablers of Russia’s war of aggression. 

RBI has confirmed it will drastically reduce its operations in Russia in line with European Central Bank requirements, though the report notes that its plans for a decisive exit from Russia remain unclear, and OTP has claimed in correspondence with B4Ukraine that it is actively trying to exit Russia. With the exception of Citigroup, however, which stopped providing services in Russia in late 2024, all banks named in the report have continued their Russian operations into early 2025.

The report’s outlook for those corporations still doing business in Russia is troubling: its findings suggest that foreign enterprises without a clear plan to exit Russia face further tax increases, potential additional tax contributions, and heightened risks of expropriation. By continuing to financially enable Russia’s war, these companies also continue to risk complicity in the well-documented and systematic war crimes the Russian military continues to commit in Ukraine. 

BankTrack and B4Ukraine continue to actively campaign for banks to cease their Russian operations and end their complicity in Russia’s war on Ukraine.

The full report can be read here.