In 1963, the London branch of the Russian Moscow Narodny Bank established a branch in Beirut for foreign trade and export support from the USSR to Middle Eastern countries.

crisis, the Beirut branch closed and some staff members and documents were transferred to Cyprus, where it received its papers from the State Bank of the USSR in 1989.

[10] The bank is based in Limassol, with branches in Nicosia[11] and nine other locations across Cyprus as of July 2018.

[18] In August 2017, Zimarin increased his ownership of RCB to 49.9% by acquiring a 19.85% stake in the Russian Otkritie Financial Corporation Bank.

[12][19] In February 2022, VTB Bank sold its shares in RCB to Cypriot shareholders in the midst of economic effects caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine,[20][21][22] thus making the bank entirely Cypriot-owned for the first time.