MOSCOW, March 16. /TASS/. Fitch Ratings said on Wednesday it had downgraded 31 Russian banks' Long-Term Foreign Currency (LTFC) Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) to 'CC' from 'B' and removed them from Rating Watch Negative (RWN).

The Short-Term IDRs have been downgraded to 'C' from 'B' and removed from RWN.

Among those banks are Raiffeisenbank, Gazprombank, Alfa-Bank, Sberbank, Tinkoff Bank and others.

"We have downgraded all Russian banks' Viability Rating (VR) to 'ccc-' from 'b' (from 'b-' in Joint Stock Company Russian Agricultural Bank) and removed them from RWN to reflect the sharp deterioration in the operating environment for conducting banking business, which has resulted in us revising the Russian operating environment score to 'ccc-' from 'b,'" the rating agency said in a statement.

On March 8, Fitch Ratings downgraded Russia's Long-Term Foreign Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to 'C' from 'B'.