UniCredit closes Moscow branch as Russia exit drags on

UniCredit has closed one of its two full-service Moscow branches, leaving just one in the capital as the Italian lender keeps shrinking but still has not left Russia. Branches in 13 Russian regions are moving to remote service, underscoring a retreat that is still unfinished and operationally messy.

The branch cut sits inside a broader plan to unwind the bank’s Russian business in stages. On May 7, UniCredit said it had signed a non-binding term sheet to sell part of its Russian subsidiary, AO Bank, to a private investor in the United Arab Emirates. UniCredit said the buyer had longstanding ties to the local institutional and business community and that compliance checks had been completed. The company said the deal could trim cumulative earnings by about €3 billion to €3.3 billion, although it would not affect shareholder distributions or its profit goals for 2028 to 2030.

Even with the sale plan, UniCredit is still working through a long list of legal, financial and regulatory constraints. The bank said in July 2024 that it aimed to more than halve loans at its Russian unit by the end of 2025, to below €1 billion, after challenging European Central Bank demands to accelerate its exit. It later withdrew that appeal in January 2026, and has since said it is focused on an orderly, accelerated solvent wind-down within legal, regulatory and sanctions limits.

The scale of what is left explains why the exit has taken so long. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, UniCredit’s Russian operations accounted for about 5% of group revenue, 1% of deposits and a 0.5% market share through 13 branches. Even as the footprint has been pared back, the business still generated a reported net profit of €577 million in 2024, a reminder that shrinking a profitable unit is rarely as simple as walking away.

That tension is now at the center of UniCredit’s Russia strategy. The bank can cut branches, sell assets and push more customers online, but each step also exposes the costs of staying partly engaged in a market where sanctions, supervision and reputational pressure remain intense. The Moscow branch closure is therefore less a finish line than another sign that the Western corporate exit from Russia is still dragging on.