Money From Russia to the UK: Still Possible — If You Know Which Rules Actually Apply

Why “can I still transfer money from Russia?” is the wrong question — and what the right one gets you

Ask most people whether money can still move from Russia to the UK, and you’ll get a flat “no.” It’s an understandable assumption — four years of escalating sanctions packages will do that. It’s also, in a large number of cases, wrong.

At Svetlova LLP we’re asked this question most weeks, usually by someone who has already been turned away once — by a bank, a compliance officer, or their own instinct — and has stopped looking for an answer. The sanctions regime is not a blanket prohibition. It is a targeted, constantly-updated licensing system, and the UK government has been actively expanding — not just tightening — the general licences that let legitimate money move.

The Regime Isn’t a Wall. It’s a Filter.

Sanctions work by exception, not by default. The starting position is that a transaction is prohibited only if it falls foul of a specific restriction — a designated person, a prohibited sector, a blocked payment route. Outside that, general licences carve out categories of transaction that are pre-authorised, and the UK has kept that carve-out alive and current: the personal remittance general licence was itself updated as recently as May 2026, and the regime as a whole has seen new packages issued roughly monthly this year. This is a live, moving system — which means the answer to “can I transfer this?” genuinely does depend on when you ask, not just what you’re asking.

What tends to get lost is that four separate sets of rules are usually in play at once, and they don’t always point the same way:

• UK sanctions law — asset freezes, designated persons, sectoral and financial restrictions, and the general licences that permit specific categories of payment
• Russian currency control and counter-sanctions rules — Russia’s own restrictions on outbound capital, which can block a transfer even where UK law would allow it
• Correspondent bank policy — commercial de-risking decisions that go well beyond what the law actually requires
• UK compliance requirements — source-of-funds and AML evidence that the receiving institution will demand before it will touch the money

A transfer can be entirely lawful under UK sanctions and still fail at any one of the other three hurdles. That’s the piece almost nobody explains — and it’s usually the real reason a transaction stalls.

What Is Actually Moving Right Now

Categories we continue to see transferred compliantly, subject to the specific facts and applicable licence conditions, include:

• Inheritance proceeds from an estate with Russian-based assets
• Sale proceeds from Russian property or other assets, once appropriately structured
• Rental income from Russian real estate
• Personal savings accumulated before an individual became sanctions-relevant in any way
• Certain categories of business income, where the underlying activity and counterparties are not restricted

None of this is automatic. Every one of these categories still requires the transaction to be checked against the current designated persons list, the relevant general licence conditions, and the receiving bank’s own risk appetite — which is precisely where most of the real difficulty sits.

Where It Actually Breaks Down

In our experience the transfer rarely fails on the law. It fails on process. The pattern we see repeatedly:

• No clear, documented source-of-funds narrative — banks will not accept “trust me” where a paper trail is expected
• The wrong payment route chosen for the category of funds, triggering correspondent bank refusal rather than a sanctions breach
• Reliance on a general licence that has since been amended or narrowed — checked once at the outset and never revisited
• A designated party appearing somewhere in the chain — not the sender or recipient, but an intermediary bank, adviser, or corporate structure

Each of these is fixable with the right preparation. None of them is fixable after the payment has already bounced.

Svetlova LLP advises regularly on cross-border transactions involving Russian assets, inheritance funds, and property sales, including source-of-funds preparation, sanctions and general licence analysis, and navigating bank compliance requirements on both sides of the transfer.

This article is for general information only and does not constitute legal advice. For advice on a specific transaction, please contact us directly.