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Turkey Faces Risks Acting as Sanctions ‘Safe Haven’ for Russians

Eclipse, a superyacht linked to sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, is docked in Marmaris, Turkey March 22, 2022. (Reuters)
Eclipse, a superyacht linked to sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, is docked in Marmaris, Turkey March 22, 2022. (Reuters)
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Turkey Faces Risks Acting as Sanctions ‘Safe Haven’ for Russians

Eclipse, a superyacht linked to sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, is docked in Marmaris, Turkey March 22, 2022. (Reuters)
Eclipse, a superyacht linked to sanctioned Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, is docked in Marmaris, Turkey March 22, 2022. (Reuters)

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine sparked a flurry of Western sanctions on Moscow, at least one oligarch and thousands of other Russians have arrived in Turkey, seen as a safe place to stay, invest and hold assets despite its NATO membership.

Acting as a safe haven raises risks for Turkey's government, banks and businesses that could face tough decisions and penalties if the United States and others ramp up pressure on Moscow with broader "secondary" sanctions.

Here is what is at stake:

Why is Turkey attractive to Russians?

Turkey has said Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine is unacceptable but opposes the sanctions on principle and is not enforcing them.

Turkey's economy, already battered by a currency crisis and soaring inflation, relies heavily on Russian oil, gas, trade and tourism.

Some 14,000 Russians have reportedly arrived in Turkey since the war began on Feb. 24, many carrying wads of cash due to blocks on their US credit cards and challenges in doing basic banking. Realtors say many are using cash and converted crypto currencies to buy property as a safe investment.

Roman Abramovich, one of several Russian oligarchs blacklisted by the West, has also visited Turkey and two of his superyachts worth a combined $1.2 billion docked at Turkish resorts last week. Oligarchs could invest more, sources familiar with private talks have told Reuters.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Saturday Russian oligarchs and citizens were "of course" welcome and could do business in Turkey according to international law.

Can the safe haven last?

Western governments have already seized some oligarchs' assets, have frozen Russia's reserves and ousted it from the SWIFT banking system, and they could press Ankara to tighten loop holes. Analysts say they could impose secondary sanctions on those doing business with the main target, Russia.

"If the humanitarian tragedy persists and Putin has no intention of backing down, I think secondary sanctions are inevitable," said Hakan Akbas, founding partner of Istanbul-based Strategic Advisory Services, which deals with sanctions.

"The West will pay more attention to any potential loop-hole countries so they don't become safe havens," he said. "Ankara's hands would be tied... and it would inevitably have to take a tougher stance against Russia."

This could send a chill through Turkish banks and companies dealing with Russian clients or doing business abroad. In 2020, the US Treasury applied secondary sanctions on Turkey's Defense Industry Directorate, its chief and others over Ankara's purchase of Russian S-400 missiles.

Yet given Turkey's efforts to mediate between Moscow and Kyiv, it could avoid the sanctions crossfire. Another round of peace talks is due to take place in Istanbul this week.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has welcomed Ankara's diplomatic role, while adding "we would very much like Turkey to implement all the sanctions".

How are banks and companies preparing?

Faced with a flood of new Russian customers, Turkish banks have resisted some deposit and transfer requests and ramped up compliance checks for fear of contravening sanctions.

This has frustrated some Russians. But it reflects caution across the sector that seeks to avoid a repetition of the years-long US prosecution of Turkish state lender Halkbank, which is accused of having helped Iran evade US sanctions.

The BDDK bank regulator said it has given no instruction to limit citizens of any country. But a senior banking source said the sanctions were nonetheless "perceived as a new risk" and firms had met several times to discuss it since the war began.

Akbas said big Turkish companies and conglomerates have more than $10 billion in assets in Russia, and Moscow is now pressing them to continue operations and pay workers or risk bankruptcy.

Many of them do far more business in the West and may have to make a "binary decision" whether to leave Russia as several big US and European brands have done, he said.

Any sanctions fallout could further bruise Turkey's reputation among foreign investors after years of unorthodox monetary policy and outflows.

That reputation took another hit last year when an international watchdog, the Financial Action Task Force, downgraded Turkey to a so-called grey list for failing to head off money laundering and terrorist financing.

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As the UN Turns 80, Its Crucial Humanitarian Aid Work Faces a Clouded Future

Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
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As the UN Turns 80, Its Crucial Humanitarian Aid Work Faces a Clouded Future

Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Students in an English class at a primary school run by URWA for Palestinian refugees at the Mar Elias refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)

At a refugee camp in northern Kenya, Aujene Cimanimpaye waits as a hot lunch of lentils and sorghum is ladled out for her and her nine children — all born while she has received United Nations assistance since fleeing her violence-wracked home in Congo in 2007.

“We cannot go back home because people are still being killed,” the 41-year-old said at the Kakuma camp, where the UN World Food Program and UN refugee agency help support more than 300,000 refugees, The Associated Press said.

Her family moved from Nakivale Refugee Settlement in neighboring Uganda three years ago to Kenya, now home to more than a million refugees from dozens of conflict-hit east African countries.

A few kilometers (miles) away at the Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement, fellow Congolese refugee Bahati Musaba, a mother of five, said that since 2016, “UN agencies have supported my children’s education — we get food and water and even medicine,” as well as cash support from WFP to buy food and other basics.

This year, those cash transfers — and many other UN aid activities — have stopped, threatening to upend or jeopardize millions of lives.

As the UN marks its 80th anniversary this month, its humanitarian agencies are facing one of the greatest crises in their history: The biggest funder — the United States — under the Trump administration and other Western donors have slashed international aid spending. Some want to use the money to build up national defense.

Some UN agencies are increasingly pointing fingers at one another as they battle over a shrinking pool of funding, said a diplomat from a top donor country who spoke on condition of anonymity to comment freely about the funding crisis faced by some UN agencies.

Such pressures, humanitarian groups say, diminish the pivotal role of the UN and its partners in efforts to save millions of lives — by providing tents, food and water to people fleeing unrest in places like Myanmar, Sudan, Syria and Venezuela, or helping stamp out smallpox decades ago.

“It’s the most abrupt upheaval of humanitarian work in the UN in my 40 years as a humanitarian worker, by far,” said Jan Egeland, a former UN humanitarian aid chief who now heads the Norwegian Refugee Council. “And it will make the gap between exploding needs and contributions to aid work even bigger.”

‘Brutal’ cuts to humanitarian aid programs UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has asked the heads of UN agencies to find ways to cut 20% of their staffs, and his office in New York has floated sweeping ideas about reform that could vastly reshape the way the United Nations doles out aid.

Humanitarian workers often face dangers and go where many others don’t — to slums to collect data on emerging viruses or drought-stricken areas to deliver water.

The UN says 2024 was the deadliest year for humanitarian personnel on record, mainly due to the war in Gaza. In February, it suspended aid operations in the stronghold of Yemen’s Houthi group, who have detained dozens of UN and other aid workers.

Proponents say UN aid operations have helped millions around the world affected by poverty, illness, conflict, hunger and other troubles.

Critics insist many operations have become bloated, replete with bureaucratic perks and a lack of accountability, and are too distant from in-the-field needs. They say postcolonial Western donations have fostered dependency and corruption, which stifles the ability of countries to develop on their own, while often UN-backed aid programs that should be time-specific instead linger for many years with no end in sight.

In the case of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning WFP and the UN’s refugee and migration agencies, the US has represented at least 40% of their total budgets, and Trump administration cuts to roughly $60 billion in US foreign assistance have hit hard. Each UN agency has been cutting thousands of jobs and revising aid spending.

“It's too brutal what has happened,” said Egeland, alluding to cuts that have jolted the global aid community. “However, it has forced us to make priorities ... what I hope is that we will be able to shift more of our resources to the front lines of humanity and have less people sitting in offices talking about the problem.”

With the UN Security Council's divisions over wars in Ukraine and the Middle East hindering its ability to prevent or end conflict in recent years, humanitarian efforts to vaccinate children against polio or shelter and feed refugees have been a bright spot of UN activity. That's dimming now.

Not just funding cuts cloud the future of UN humanitarian work

Aside from the cuts and dangers faced by humanitarian workers, political conflict has at times overshadowed or impeded their work.

UNRWA, the aid agency for Palestinian refugees, has delivered an array of services to millions — food, education, jobs and much more — in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan as well as in the West Bank and Gaza since its founding in 1948.

Israel claims the agency's schools fan antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiment, which the agency denies. Israel says Hamas siphons off UN aid in Gaza to profit from it, while UN officials insist most aid gets delivered directly to the needy.

“UNRWA is like one of the foundations of your home. If you remove it, everything falls apart,” said Issa Haj Hassan, 38, after a checkup at a small clinic at the Mar Elias Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut.

UNRWA covers his diabetes and blood pressure medication, as well as his wife’s heart medicine. The United States, Israel's top ally, has stopped contributing to UNRWA; it once provided a third of its funding. Earlier this year, Israel banned the aid group, which has strived to continue its work nonetheless.

Ibtisam Salem, a single mother of five in her 50s who shares a small one-room apartment in Beirut with relatives who sleep on the floor, said: “If it wasn’t for UNRWA we would die of starvation. ... They helped build my home, and they give me health care. My children went to their schools.”

Especially when it comes to food and hunger, needs worldwide are growing even as funding to address them shrinks.

“This year, we have estimated around 343 million acutely food insecure people,” said Carl Skau, WFP deputy executive director. “It’s a threefold increase if we compare four years ago. And this year, our funding is dropping 40%. So obviously that’s an equation that doesn’t come together easily.”

Billing itself as the world's largest humanitarian organization, WFP has announced plans to cut about a quarter of its 22,000 staff.

The aid landscape is shifting

One question is how the United Nations remains relevant as an aid provider when global cooperation is on the outs, and national self-interest and self-defense are on the upswing.

The United Nations is not alone: Many of its aid partners are feeling the pinch. Groups like GAVI, which tries to ensure fair distribution of vaccines around the world, and the Global Fund, which spends billions each year to help battle HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, have been hit by Trump administration cuts to the US Agency for International Development.

Some private-sector, government-backed groups also are cropping up, including the divisive Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which has been providing some food to Palestinians. But violence has erupted as crowds try to reach the distribution sites.

The future of UN aid, experts say, will rest where it belongs — with the world body's 193 member countries.

“We need to take that debate back into our countries, into our capitals, because it is there that you either empower the UN to act and succeed — or you paralyze it,” said Achim Steiner, administrator of the UN Development Program.