This herculean undertaking on a bank of the Moskva River was to be Moscow’s answer to Manhattan or the City of London.

One tower, called Evolution, twists in a DNA-evoking double helix. The spires of Federation Towers resemble billowing sails, evoking Russia sailing into a capitalist future. Federation Tower East, when finished, will rise 95 stories to a height of 1,224 feet, surpassing its still mostly empty neighbor Mercury City Tower as the tallest building in Europe.

Eight skyscrapers are finished, including the gold-tinted Mercury tower. Eight others are under construction, and two more are planned. The entire site is scheduled to be finished by 2018.

But Russia’s tanks are now getting more international attention than its banks, leaving Moscow City as a $12 billion reminder of the nation’s economic woes.

Western sanctions, for example, have taken aim at Russia’s largest state financial institutions, Sberbank and VTB, which both own towers or floor space in Moscow City. The two banks now have a limited ability to issue debt on global markets, thus limiting their growth options.

Sanctions by the United States and the European Union are expected to trim about 1 percentage point of growth from Russia’s gross domestic product this year, and slightly more next year if they remain in place. Even without sanctions, problems have been stacking up. Rising inflation, falling oil prices, and a tumbling ruble have left Russia near recession.

The government also accounts for an outsize proportion of the economy, leaving scant jobs for the grunt workers of private enterprise, the bankers, lawyers and traders for whom Moscow City was built. In Russia, 81 percent of the shares of the top 10 companies are owned by the same entity, the state, compared with 11 in Germany, according to a study by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development economists.