As Russian troops advance across Ukraine, Russian banks are staging a tactical retreat. Sberbank, the largest, is pulling out of Austria after the EU’s Single Resolution Board tipped its operations there into insolvency proceedings. That prompts inevitable questions about the robustness of Russia’s heavily sanctioned banking system.

International investors might appear braced for collapses. Sberbank’s American depository receipts are trading at a single cent compared with $15 a few weeks ago. But that may mainly reflect efforts by foreign investors to dump all Russian assets and the closure of the Moscow stock market, which might otherwise provide a healthier reference price.

The shuttering of Sberbank’s EU operation is also the result of sanctions — in this case restrictions preventing the Russian parent from providing additional liquidity. These have forced the unravelling of European operations, including flash sales by Sberbank of subsidiaries in Croatia and Slovenia. Sberbank has meanwhile avoided the harshest US sanctions.