Holders of A7A5, a ruble-pegged stablecoin built to get around Western sanctions, have been waiting for interest payments since October 9.
Ukrainian drones attacked Russian data centers hosting its exchange, and daily transfers fell to around 61 across two blockchains.
Ukrainian drones knocked out Yandex’s Sasovo data center on October 8
Ukrainian drones set fire to a Yandex data center in Sasovo, in Russia’s Ryazan region, overnight October 7-8. Yandex has suspended the site.
More than 1,300 complaints about Yandex Cloud, Yandex Documents and Yandex Tables were registered by Downdetector. Shares of Yandex fell more than 3.4% on the Moscow Exchange.
Since the 2022 invasion, no Russian data centers had been confirmed hit. Russian forces have struck at least eight major data centers in Kyiv since late September.
A second Yandex data center was hit that week.
A7A5 itself settles on Tron and Ethereum. Activity declined “not because” the token depends on the facilities “but because its exchange service does,” Elliptic co-founder and chief scientist Tom Robinson wrote on X on October 12.
Etherscan shows there are about 17,600 holders of A7A5 on Ethereum with 23 transfers in 24 hours. On Tron, 38 transfers moved among more than 30,700 holders.
About 600 transfers a day were taking place before the strikes. What’s left is mostly swaps on decentralized exchanges like Uniswap, Robinson said.
Uniswap took A7A5 off its website in November 2025. Its smart contracts continue to support the token.
CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap valued A7A5 at approximately $455 million to $483 million. Daily volume is anywhere from zero to around $1,500.
Promissory notes now redeem only at the A7-Finance office
Users say interest payments stopped October 9. A7A5 promised to pay all interest due for each day missed.
Users asked how to get promissory notes for paid orders. The notes “can only be redeemed for rubles at the A7-Finance office,” the company said.
The support bot is down, too. All that’s left is a phone number.
A7A5’s Telegram channels blamed scheduled technical work on October 8, then technical problems a day later. The company said on October 14 it anticipated resuming operations “soon.”
The exchange’s principal job is to convert rubles to Tether’s USDT, Robinson said. Yandex has hosted it since September 2025.
The service ran in Europe before that. Sanctions on A7A5 in August 2025 likely drove it onto Russian hosting, Robinson said.
A7 kicked off a service in October to permit businesses to make payments in USDT. A7 sends the money to their suppliers via normal SWIFT transfers.
The service offers A7 USDT that could supply liquidity to A7A5, Robinson said.
A7A5 was reportedly created by Russian company A7 and is issued by Kyrgyzstan-registered firm Old Vector, Cryptopolitan reported. A7 says deposits held at Promsvyazbank, a sanctioned Russian state lender, back the token.
Average daily A7A5 volume diminished to $24.3 million in June 2026, down 96% from its July 2025 peak, after coordinated US, UK and EU sanctions.
Cryptopolitan reports that the EU’s 20th sanctions package in April included a Kyrgyz exchange trading A7A5.
According to Cryptopolitan, Russia sanctioned British teen Alexander Browder in June after his A7A5 research shaped UK sanctions.
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