Russia's largest oil producer completes its very first yuan-denominated bond sale as Moscow leans further toward China's currency

• Russia's Roneft completed a bond sale backed by Chinese yuan Thursday worth $2 billion.
• The Kremlin has grown closer to China in recent months, boosting trade since the invasion of Ukraine.

Russia's largest state-run oil producer completed a sale bond denominated in Chinese yuan worth over $2 billion.

Rosneft said Thursday the company successfully rolled out a bond sale backed by Chinese yuan, as Russia forges closer ties with China and seeks to diversify transactions after major domestic banks were banned from SWIFT earlier in the year.

Russia's shift toward so-called "friendly" countries and currencies has pushed Moscow to embrace China's yuan while trade between the two nations grows. Both China and Russia have mutually sought for years to find an alternative transaction vehicle to circumvent SWIFT, and the Kremlin's Gazprom has already started accepting payments for gas in both rubles and yuan.

President Vladimir Putin and Xi Jingping met on Thursday and discussed both Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the future of the two countries' economic unity prospects that includes trade, which Putin says he hopes will bolster to upwards of $200 billion.