Foreign Minister Winston Peters has announced New Zealand’s 35th round of sanctions against Russia, targeting 20 individuals and entities tied to cybercrime, anti-Ukraine propaganda and a cryptocurrency network that Western investigators say has become a key channel for sanctions evasion.
The announcement, made on Thursday afternoon, brings the total number of people, entities and vessels designated under the Russia Sanctions Act to more than 2,000 since the legislation came into force in March 2022. New Zealand introduced that act as a one-off measure shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and successive rounds of designations have run alongside sanctions imposed by the European Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and Canada.
The most consequential name on the new list is A7, a Russian-linked cryptocurrency payment outfit that Peters said had been widely used to evade sanctions. A7 is tied to Promsvyazbank, the Russian state bank that handles a large share of defence-sector payments, and to Moldovan fugitive oligarch Ilan Shor, who according to international reporting holds a controlling stake in the company. A7 issues a rouble-backed stablecoin known as A7A5, which money-laundering analysts have flagged as a vehicle for moving funds across borders without touching the conventional banking system.
According to investigations by the European Union, the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency and outlets including Foreign Policy and the Kyiv Independent, A7-linked networks have been used to settle payments for dual-use components destined for Russian missiles and drones, and to push large volumes of value through jurisdictions such as Kyrgyzstan that fall outside the main sanctions regimes. The EU added A7 and the related Payeer payment service to its own sanctions list in late 2025, and the United Kingdom designated the company shortly afterwards. Thursday’s announcement aligns New Zealand with that growing list.
In a written statement, Peters said the package was aimed squarely at the digital plumbing of Russia’s war effort. “Those who mis-use online platforms to support Russia’s war against Ukraine will face real consequences, including sanctions,” he said. “We are targeting the payment infrastructure that has helped enable Russia’s war against Ukraine.”
The new designations also reach beyond Russia itself. Peters confirmed that several of the 20 targets are based in North Korea and Iran, both of which have been supplying Russia with weapons, ammunition and components since 2022. North Korean artillery shells and ballistic missiles have been used in strikes on Ukrainian cities, while Iranian Shahed-style drones have become a regular feature of nightly air attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure. By naming actors in those two countries, the Government has effectively extended the reach of New Zealand’s Russia sanctions regime into the wider authoritarian supply chain that supports the invasion.
A further group of designations covers what the Foreign Minister described as malicious cyber actors and people involved in producing and spreading anti-Ukraine propaganda online. New Zealand has previously sanctioned individuals connected with Russia’s GRU military intelligence service and with state-backed disinformation operations, and the latest round continues that pattern. Specific names are expected to appear shortly on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade sanctions register.
In practice, designation under the Russia Sanctions Act freezes any New Zealand-held assets belonging to those listed, blocks New Zealand individuals and businesses from dealing with them, and prohibits travel to this country. Because most of the people and companies targeted have no obvious local footprint, the immediate financial bite tends to be modest. The wider effect is reputational and operational. Once a name appears on a sanctions register, banks and payment processors in third countries become significantly more cautious about handling related transactions, even where they are not legally bound by New Zealand’s measures.
The announcement comes at a politically awkward moment for the coalition, with the domestic agenda dominated by the ongoing fuel crisis and the recent United States request that New Zealand help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Peters has been careful in recent weeks to distinguish between the Russia file, where the Government’s line has been consistent and hawkish, and the Iran file, where Wellington has urged restraint. Thursday’s package threads the two together by sanctioning Iranian actors not for the regional conflict in the Gulf but specifically for their role in supporting Russia’s war.
Opposition parties have generally supported each round of Russia sanctions since 2022, and there is no indication that the political consensus will break on this latest package. The Greens have repeatedly pushed for the Government to go further by including more figures in Russia’s commercial elite, while Labour has pressed for a permanent autonomous sanctions framework rather than the single-purpose Russia Sanctions Act.
That structural question continues to hang over the regime. The Russia Sanctions Act remains a one-off statute. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has signalled that it would prefer a permanent autonomous sanctions framework, of the kind already in place in most comparable democracies, but successive governments have stopped short of introducing one. For now, every fresh round of designations against Russian, North Korean and Iranian targets has to be hung off the same single piece of legislation written specifically for the 2022 invasion.
Sources include RNZ, Live News, the MFAT sanctions overview and Elliptic‘s analysis of the A7A5 network.
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This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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