When Sergii Naumov took over as chief executive at one of Ukraine’s biggest state banks before Russia’s invasion, his job was to privatize it. Now he’s glad he didn’t get the chance.

The role of Ukraine’s banking system is one of the less told stories of the nation’s resilience. It survived the loss of assets to occupation, power outages and a 30% collapse in gross domestic product without bank runs, service interruption or any significant closures. State-controlled lenders like Naumov’s Oschadbank JSC have played a part.

"Generally, when you have this state-owned economy it is not good, but during the war it helped,” says Naumov. "We know what our mission is.”