In an interview with RIA Novosti in the runup to the Russia Calling 2023 investment forum, Olga Basha, VTB’s head of international settlements pointed out that trade settlements in national currencies between Vietnam and Russia are skyrocketing in 2023.

Basha pointed out that there was a quadrupling of settlements which were conducted in ruble and dong between the two nations.

The bank executive from the second-largest lender in Russia said, “In Vietnam, we are market makers with all the payments for the ruble-dong pair going through our joint bank.”

Basha noted that transactions which were settled in national currencies which passed through VTB’s infrastructure within its subsidiaries and branches overseas had grown exponentially according to the bank’s records. She added that includes the work the bank does in India and China, and that it operates a chain of banks throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States as well.

The growing trend throughout the world towards the use of national currencies to settle cross-border trade transactions instead of Western currencies such as the dollar and Euro gained momentum in 2022, immediately following the Western sanctions leveled against Russia over the military conflict in Ukraine. The sanctions both seized much of Russia’s foreign reserves in dollars, and denied Russian banks access to Western financial systems, such as the SWIFT interbank messaging system.

Analysts say that as world leaders saw the use of Western currencies as a means of cross border trade settlement weaponized for political purposes, they began to fear their own national economies were vulnerable to being weaponized against them for political purposes through such a denial of trade settlement mechanisms.

This led to a plethora of nations beginning to experiment with methods of trade settlement which did not require Western currencies such as the dollar or euro, and which could be performed without access to Western financial systems.