Aval has announced it is to close its remaining six branches in Crimea on 15 April.

Raiffeisen Bank Aval, the Ukrainian subsidiary of Austrian based Raiffeisen bank, had 32 branches in Crimea before Russia’s annexation of the peninsula.

A spokesperson for the bank said: "The branches are closing because they will have to operate under Russian law and there are contradictions between Russian and Ukrainian law."

Privatbank, Ukraine’s largest bank, already closed all of its 339 branches in Crimea. The bank had previously invested £180m ($300m)in the region.

Russian banks are afraid to move to Crimea because they fear possible penalties from the West, according to Alexei Simanovsky, First Deputy Governor of the Bank of Russia.

Russia’s lower house of parliament, the Duma, is working on a bill that would give the central bank the right to close Ukrainian banks in Crimea that refuse to meet their obligations to customers.

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But not just banks are closing their business on the peninsula. Fast food vendor McDonald’s has also shut down its restaurants in Crimea, although it said the decision had "nothing to do with politics".

After Visa and MasterCard stopped processing some Russian transactions in response to U.S. sanctions, Moscow has revived plans to develop its own card payment system, potentially causing disruption to the current payments system.

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