European Central Bank (ECB) supervisory chief Andrea Enria has called on European lenders to expedite their exit from Russia amid the country’s ongoing illegal invasion of Ukraine.

In a letter to members of the European Parliament published on Tuesday, Enria said that while the ECB has urged the issue for months, the issue had taken on greater significance following the Wagner militia’s short-lived coup attempt last weekend.

Enria said that the mutiny underscored Russia’s political fragility and highlighted the reputational, legal and financial risk of doing business there.

In the letter, Enria has "urged these banks to speed up their downsizing and exit strategies by adopting clear roadmaps and by regularly reporting to their management bodies and to ECB Banking Supervision on the execution of these plans".

Banks including Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International, JPMorgan Chase, OTP Group and UniCredit all have relatively large Russian businesses and are looking to remove themselves from the market.

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