The Azov battalion-affiliated National Corps political party has launched a second blockade of Sberbank as part of a larger effort to push Russian businesses out of the country.
Activists with the far-right nationalist group set up camp outside of Sberbank-Ukraine’s downtown Kyiv headquarters on April 10, two weeks after the same organization abandoned the blockade amid reports of Sberbank being sold.
A second group of protesters attempted to blockade the lender’s Kharkiv branch, and clashed with National Guard troopers. Ukrainian media reported that the Sberbank branch there remained closed due to the violence.
The renewed blockade comes almost exactly two weeks after the National Corps ended their blockade of Sberbank’s head office in Kyiv after a consortium of investors headed by the son of a British-Russian billionaire announced its intention to buy the lender’s Ukraine division.
National Corps said in a March 28 statement that it was ending the blockade upon achieving “the first strategic stage” of forcing Russian state capital out of Ukraine.
Now, it’s taking a more expansive aim.
“Russian business is the sponsor of the murder of our citizens in eastern Ukraine,” Assistant Head of the National Corps Nazar Kravchenko told the Kyiv Post.
The National Corps started protesting outside of Russian banks in February, before building a wall of cement blocks outside of Sberbank-Ukraine’s Kyiv headquarters in early March. Activists abandoned the blockade on March 28 after Sberbank’s sale and after President Petro Poroshenko issued sanctions against Russian banks that banned them from transferring capital outside of Ukraine.
Ukrainian media reports indicated that the International Monetary Fund had delayed wiring its $1 billion tranche until the blockade ended. The IMF approved the loan on April 3, one week after the blockade ended.
Outgoing National Bank Governor Valeriya Gontareva said during a press conference announcing her resignation on April 10 that the government had agreed with the IMF to protect the divisions of Russian banks operating in Ukraine.
Kravchenko, the National Corps deputy chief, said that his party demands that “the bank’s license be annulled.”
“We don’t want Russian banks to get profits from the territory of Ukraine,” he said.
But when asked why they stopped the blockade in the first place, Kravchenko denied that it had anything to do with the sale.
“We gave an opportunity to those Ukrainians with money in Sberbank to take out their money,” he added.
Kravchenko went on to say that companies related to Sberbank – like the ride-sharing app Yandex.taxi – were also targeted by the blockade, albeit indirectly.
“Sberbank is our priority,” he said.
A Sberbank spokeswoman told the Kyiv Post that the bank had received a security guarantee from the National Guard in relation to the new round of blockades. The bank added that law enforcement had not responded to its calls during the previous March siege.
Sberbank issued a press release on April 7 declaring its intention to “leave the Ukrainian market” as soon as the sale of the bank’s Ukraine division went through.
National Guardsmen continue to protect Sberbank, preventing it from being walled over for a second time.
A National Guard spokesman declined to comment.
