Be it either way or both ways, you should know that I am following what people are posting on this thread. Did you not noticed the merit that I have sent to a reputable member for posting something similar to what you posted. I know that it could be because of Western Sanctions from what some people have posted.

With crypto regulations being so strict in Russia, there is no other way to continue maintaining their operations there.. So ending their services in those two countries is a rational choice for them because maintaining operations under such restrictive conditions could expose them to legal risks.. They can still operate in many other countries, so rather than putting their business at risk, it makes more sense for them to withdraw from those countries and focus on jurisdictions where the regulations are more favorable to their services.. so it's not completely the end for them.

Yeah every legitimate business is going to comply as soon as someone really goes after them. So when someone is not complying they are two main reasons that could be. One is that they are not interesting or significant enough for a regulator to go directly after them, so they are playing with time and trying to earn money during this phase of not being directly pursued. The other one is that the business is suspicious and does not want to comply. In some cases this could be fine, but when it comes to platforms that deal with money we can't risk it being scammers. I always wondered about the global sanctions and about how these lists are handled. Like why is Kazakhstan on a list of sanctioned counties?

There are many ways to avoid these sanctions at least for crypto to crypto trades, so users under sanctioned countries need to improve their knowledge and use better tools. The only difficult thing is access to fiat, but not that many people need regular off boarding for fiat compared to crypto to crypto trades I think.

This does not mean that these new limits were put in place as a result of either of these changes, as neither announcement makes any mention of which specific rule or regulator is the reason for the new limits.
There have been recent rules deadlines and changes to sanctions, so I would not automatically assume this is about older sanctions that are only now being applied for the first time.
The EU’s 20th sanctions package includes new limits on deals with Russian and Belarusian crypto-service providers from May 24, 2026.
The transition period for meeting the rules of the EU’s crypto law, MiCA, ended on July 1.

I expect that many exchanges will follow MEXC and Bitget in ending their services in Russia soon because these services will cause them trouble and expose them to penalties for violating the sanctions imposed on Russia by the United States and the European Union.

The main victims of all this are Russian users who have no connection to politics whatsoever; many of them do not support Putin or the Russian government, but nevertheless bear the consequences of these policies.

Just because they don't mention it in their announcements, it doesn't mean it's not the reason. As I said the pressure these regimes put on these companies is not always made public. It happens behind the scene and I am just speculating here because of the timing and based on West's behavior:

You see the US regime is trying to resume the war in West Asia so they need to freeze their war in East Europe hence the pausing of certain military aid to their proxies including the StarLink connections, talks of negotiations with Russia, etc. But they don't want to end that war and want to continue weakening Russia; therefore when they lower the "armed" aggression pressure, they increase the pressure elsewhere. One of it is economical. This is why over the past couple of months they've been destroying Russian gas/diesel infrastructure (so that in case there is a ceasefire or even lower level of conflict between NATO and Russia, the Russians still struggle with fuel).
This type of pressure (banning average Russian who was using such exchanges) is part of that plan and it has to happen at this particular time. In Autumn.

It would also be interesting to see if the MEXC and Bitget policy changes were in response to political pressure. EU recently passed its 20th sanctions package against Russia which bans all EU persons and groups from dealing with Russian crypto asset service providers, and in July the EU sanctioned HTX and others for supposedly helping Russia bypass sanctions.

While this is not proof that MEXC and Bitget put changes in place due to political pressure or that the changes were timed to match the wider political situation, I do not think it is enough proof to rule that possibility out either based only on the fact that they did not directly mention it in their policy change announcements. Especially considering that exchanges have reason to make changes that help them avoid the risk of future secondary sanctions or other rule issues even before they are directly targeted by sanctions enforcement actions.

Sources: https://finance.ec.europa.eu/news/eu-adopts-20th-package-sanctions-against-russia-2026-04-23_en https://www.theblock.co/news/regulation/2026-07-25-eu-adds-htx-to-russia-sanctions-list-barring-transactions-starting-aug-23

That's right, exchanges or companies that provide financial services always prefer to stay away from conflict zones or countries under international sanctions. We have suffered from this here in my country, Syria, for many years.

Because of the policy of hostility towards the United States and allegiance to Russia and Iran that the previous Syrian government followed, sanctions were imposed on us for many years, and all crypto exchanges and financial companies such as Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, and others have blocked Syria.

Now, with the end of the civil war and the arrival of a government aligned with the United States and the West, the sanctions have been lifted, and these companies have begun to return gradually.

They are still controlling the world somehow, so Bitget and MEXC have to accept what they say. They will not want to lose EU license and they will not want to get into trouble.

I think decentralized exchanges would have been better, but what these exchanges are offering, decentralized exchanges are not offering some of it and the convenience.

I think exchanges that no country will have influence on will be better, it can be made but people prefer centralized exchanges. People are the problem of themselves.

A shortened explanation to this would be that West has always had an egregious desire to control, both what is at  reach and that which is far apart. You got a little aggro to have used too many of the "Epstein Axis" word to describe them. But if not them, then who else answers for that?  

How did they successfully tie this to the AML rules for these countries but not the others? It's high time we knew that these western regulators don't have a mind of their own. This is also a form of sanction, especially since they're targeting cross-border financial channels.