Days after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Raiffeisen, an Austrian financial institution, stated it was contemplating promoting its enterprise in Russia. Twenty-seven months later, the lender’s unit within the nation is doing fairly effectively. Its workers has grown to almost 10,000, a 7% rise since 2022. Final yr its revenue reached €1.8bn ($2bn)—greater than any of the financial institution’s different subsidiaries and a tripling since 2021. Raiffeisen is one in all a dozen lenders that Russia deems “systemically” essential to its economic system. The financial institution additionally issues to the Kremlin’s personal funds, because it paid the equal of half a billion {dollars} in tax final yr.