Since the beginning of the full-scale war, goods under sanctions totaling $2 billion have been sent from the European Union in transit through Russia, but about half of them "lost" on the territory of the Russian Federation. Products were taken to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Armenia.
The Financial Times writes about it.
In this way, goods, the export of which is prohibited to Russia, came from the European Union to the Russian Federation under the pretext that their final recipients would be other countries.
Against the background of the sanctions that the USA and the West introduced against Russia, a suspiciously sharp increase in the import of some categories of goods to countries that did not support the sanctions was recorded.
The European Union has repeatedly stated that it will fight against the importation of sanctioned goods into the Russian Federation through roundabout ways. In May 2023, the EU banned the transit of dual-purpose goods through Russia.
"Some discrepancies in global trade statistics are not unusual, but this goes beyond typical minor errors," a senior fellow at the US-based Peterson Institute for International Economics Elina Rybakova told the publication.
The true volume of shadow imports is likely to be much higher, as the FT statistics only cover dual-use goods that could potentially be used for military purposes, FT reported.
