Third countries as transit points: EU military products end up in Russia despite sanctions
19 February 17:01
Military goods from the European Union continue to be delivered to Russia via third countries, despite the existing and expanded sanctions.
This is stated in a study by the Munich-based ifo Institute for Economic Research and the EconPol Europe think tank, published on Thursday, February 19, according to "Komersant Ukrainian".
According to the study, more than a third (36%) of sanctioned goods that end up in Russia are transported through Turkey. China accounts for almost a quarter (23%). Next are Hong Kong with a share of 16% and the United Arab Emirates with 10%.
Although the EU has significantly tightened and expanded export bans on Russia since the beginning of 2024, leading to a reduction in the scale of sanctions circumvention through third countries, ifo trade expert Feodora Teti is confident that supplies have not stopped completely.
In the last three months of 2024, exports from the EU to Russia via third countries amounted to about 6% of the pre-war level, according to Teti and her colleagues. By comparison, between September 2022 and January 2024, the average monthly figure ranged from 13% to 24%. The authors of the study emphasize that their estimates only take into account indirect deliveries via third countries. Other forms of sanctions circumvention, such as smuggling by private individuals and imports using false information about goods or countries of origin, are not included in the analysis. Therefore, the figures obtained should be considered as the lower limit of the actual scale of sanctions circumvention.
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 circumvention of restrictions via third countries. In addition, export bans were extended to all 42 categories of products of military significance, and targeted sanctions were imposed on individual intermediaries involved in re-exports.
The ifo and EconPol Europe study is based on trade data for these 42 categories of military and military-related products that are subject to 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 level of individual transactions and compares deliveries before and after the start of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine.
