VTB could suffer an estimated 10-20 billion rubles in losses if the negative scenario regarding its Ukrainian subsidiary materializes, VTB Deputy CEO Yuri Soloviev has told journalists.

In the positive scenario, the group could make a small profit.

"Ukraine brought us quite significant losses. All of this has naturally accelerated with certain actions of Ukraine's government. The latest events under which the actions and political sanctions were allegedly invoked to protect Ukraine's assets, at the end of the day accelerate the problems that banks are facing. They lead to a situation in which banks have growing problems with liquidity," he said.

"As a baseline scenario, we wanted VTB Ukraine to return money to depositors in an orderly manner and liquidate assets. We have significant overshoot of assets over depositor funds and if there hadn't been such a frenzy we would have calmly liquidated the assets and returned money to depositors," he said.

"VTB's subsidiary has significantly reduced its presence in the Ukrainian market and was supposed to reduce itself to 12 points of presence this year and three by the beginning of 2018," he said.

"People, especially in Ukraine, are interested not in whether we wanted to do a fire sale, we are definitely looking at such proposals as well, but at the moment our baseline condition was to gradually close the business and return assets," he said.

"Under the positive scenario, we should even make a small profit. Under the negative scenario we could have a few tens of billions of rubles in losses if the government continues to put pressure on us going forward," he said.

Responding to a question on what would be a negative scenario for VTB, Soloviev said: "Perhaps nationalization, an illegal takeover. I believe that the negative scenario materialized for Sberbank. They had to sell the bank practically in a few days. This is one of the best banks in Ukraine, they were always working and were not in default. Only Ukraine loses out without the presence of these banks, but competing borrowers could profit from this. These people are trying to politically receive some kind of dividends through this," he said.

He said VTB could lose 10-20 billion rubles if the negative scenario in Ukraine materializes.