Through which countries does EU military products reach Russia? 0 9

Military goods from the European Union continue to reach Russia through third countries, despite existing and expanded sanctions. This is stated in a study by the Munich Institute for Economic Research ifo and the analytical center EconPol Europe, published on Thursday, February 19.

According to the study's data, more than a third (36%) of sanctioned goods that ultimately end up in Russia are transported through Turkey. Almost a quarter (23%) comes from China. Following are Hong Kong with a share of 16% and the United Arab Emirates - 10%. Although since the beginning of 2024, the EU has significantly tightened and expanded export bans regarding Russia, leading to a reduction in the scale of sanctions evasion through third countries, trade expert at ifo, Feodora Teti, is confident that supplies have not completely ceased.

In the last three months of 2024, the volume of exports from the EU that went to Russia through indirect routes via third countries amounted to about 6% of the pre-war level, claims Teti and her colleagues. For comparison, from September 2022 to January 2024, the average monthly figure ranged from 13% to 24%. At the same time, the authors of the study emphasize that their estimates only account for indirect supplies through third countries. Other forms of sanctions evasion - such as smuggling by individuals, as well as imports using false information about goods or countries of origin - are not included in the analysis. Therefore, the figures obtained should be considered as a lower boundary of the actual scale of sanctions evasion.

EU Sanctions Against Russia

In 2024, the European Union also expanded liability for violations of sanctions against Russia. It now also applies to cases where suppliers or intermediaries knew or should have known about possible evasion of restrictions through third countries. In addition, export bans have been extended to all 42 categories of products with military significance, and targeted sanctions have been imposed against individual intermediaries involved in re-exporting.

The ifo and EconPol Europe study is based on trade data for these 42 categories of military and dual-use products that fall under EU export bans and have been repeatedly found in Russian military systems. The analysis is based on import data from Russian customs declarations at the transaction level and compares supplies before and after the start of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine.