Activists gathered outside the Wiener Stadthalle arena in Vienna on Thursday, calling on Raiffeisen Bank’s board members to close down its business in Russia. The WeMove Europe petition, organized in partnership with the B4Ukraine Coalition and BankTrack, gathered over 50,000 signatures by 4 April, the day of the AGM.

Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International AG is the biggest foreign bank still present in Russia, accounting for roughly one-quarter of euro transfers to the country and handling up to 50% of all the money flows between Russia and the rest of the world.

In 2023, RBI made record profits in Russia amounting to 1.35 billion euros ($1.47 billion). This amounts to almost half of its global profits made in the same year.

Many banks, including Société Générale, BNP Paribas, and Crédit Agricole, have already withdrawn from the aggressor state, while Raiffeisen is still paying millions in taxes to the Kremlin, bolstering its war machine, the protesters said.

“Moscow had committed war crimes such as deliberate attacks on hospitals and forced deportations of children. With our collective pressure we will show that all of Europe is watching, fed up with their dodging double dealings, and we want action. Together we could force Raiffeisen to halt its financing of Putin’s war machine,” the protesters said.

B4Ukraine and BankTrack call on the Board of Raiffeisen Bank to write off the bank’s Russian assets and, as other lenders have done before them, exit Russia as soon as possible without handing over valuable assets that could be used to prolong its war against Ukraine.

Related: