Promsvyazbank (PSB), Russia’s state-owned bank and the primary financer of its military procurement for the war against Ukraine, has emerged since 2022 as a key instrument in Moscow’s efforts to fully integrate the temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories (ToTs) into Russia’s financial system. This process, made possible by rubleization in 2022, involves luring local residents into becoming clients through lucrative offers and initiatives that position PSB as the guarantor of essential social payments. Amid the expanding role of Russian financial institutions in state surveillance, the consolidation of sensitive personal data through PSB may be enhancing the ability of occupation authorities to leverage that information for surveillance of the local population. This is a concern given that an estimated half of the population in the ToTs are registered with PSB. This report examines the process of PSB’s expansion over ToTs and its effects, finding that:
- PSB is actively encouraging residents of the ToTs to use its banking accounts and cards to both receive essential payments like pensions, social support and benefits, and pay utility bills.
- PSB has introduced resident’s cards that link access to social and municipal services to the bank’s infrastructure, deepening financial integration with the occupying power and generating consolidated data on beneficiaries.
- PSB is extending this model to children: together with the occupation authorities in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Russia-registered private transport company Alpika, PSB has introduced a schoolchildren’s card that offers similar functions to the adult resident’s cards, promoted to parents as a means of controlling children’s spending.
- PSB is helping install Russian economic policy in the ToTs and, according to Russian state media, is the “facilitator” of the government’s business-support scheme in the “new regions.” These measures include preferential lending and simplified online applications for small and medium sized enterprises, as well as cooperation with the Russian Ministry of Agriculture to boost agricultural production in the occupied part of Kherson Oblast, as Russian drones target Ukrainian farmers behind the contact line.
- PSB is launching lucrative housing programmes in the ToTs, made available to Russians from across the country in an apparent attempt to bring Russians into seized Ukrainian territories.
- PSB is supporting efforts to connect businesses in the ToTs to Russian-supported international trade networks via sanctions evasion service A7. China and Belarus appear to be particular target markets: in December 2025, the so-called DPR’s “My Business” centre announced the signing of the first export contracts for confectionery and frozen-food products from the so-called “DPR” with these two countries.
Combined, these findings show how Russia is attempting to strengthen control over the occupied parts of Ukraine via PSB. Reports indicate that this is putting local residents living under occupation in further danger: in January 2026, Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation warned that Russian authorities were increasing monitoring of cash transfers and digital payments, expanding regulators’ access to payment-system data and accelerating information exchange between government agencies, specifying that residents of the ToTs as being at heightened risk of financial monitoring and pressure.
There is circumstantial evidence to indicate that this is indeed the case: Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has required major Russian banks to integrate a dedicated surveillance interface (SORM) into their systems by 2027, which would enable the storage of correspondence, voice messages and other content transmitted through banking applications. Banks would then be mandated to provide this information to law enforcement authorities upon request. This expansion of Russian surveillance enforcement for banks further underscores the significance of PSB’s role in the ToTs: Russia’s increasing intrusion into the provision of everyday and essential services for people in occupation – by making PSB accounts and cards increasingly necessary for accessing pensions, benefits, housing finance, business support, etc – may enhance the ability of occupation authorities to surveil Ukrainians living in the ToTs even further.