Why do some businesses grow globally while others stay stuck, even when both are equally talented?

Being Russian and doing business with China, I hadn’t thought about it before 2022 — when my country entered a conflict you all know about.

And then it started:

• Accounts blocked

• Suppliers afraid to talk

• Business stuck

I found that even if you don’t do any sanctioned or restricted business, it doesn’t help. By default, they believe that if you are Russian, then you must be doing business with sanctioned jurisdictions — and thus, you’re high-risk.

I wasted months opening accounts and setting up payments again and again. One bank blocked the account of my Hong Kong company because we accepted payments from individual customers in Singapore. Ridiculously, they didn’t believe that a company owned by a Russian could legally buy Muslim wear from Thailand and Indonesia, and sell it to Singaporean individuals.

Another bank blocked our account for reimbursing expenses to my personal Kazakhstan account. They assumed “Kazakhstan = Russian business”, even though there was not a single transaction from there related to my country.

And of course, for a consulting business, KYC checks for every payment and constantly explaining what each transaction is about became our reality.

That’s when I realized:

It’s not about what you do. It’s about where you’re from.

And unless you’ve lived it, you won’t understand how exhausting, unfair — and normal — it becomes.

But there is a way through.

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