Although the European Union (EU) has imposed extensive sanctions on Russia for its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, military equipment from the EU continues to enter Russia via third countries. This is stated in a new study by the Munich-based Institute for Economic Research (ifo) and the EconPol Europe platform. TASR informs about this with reference to the ifo press release published on Thursday on its website.
More than a third (36 percent) of sanctioned equipment entering Russia is transported through Turkey, followed by China (23 percent), Hong Kong (16 percent) and the United Arab Emirates (ten percent). “Since the beginning of 2024, the EU has significantly tightened and expanded export bans to Russia. This led to a reduction in the circumvention of sanctions through third countries, although sanctioned military goods still flow indirectly from the EU to Russia,” said ifo expert Feodora Tetiová.
In the last three months of 2024, EU exports to Russia via third countries represented approximately six percent of the level before the start of the war in Ukraine. From September 2022 to January 2024, the monthly average was between 13 and 24 percent. “Our estimates capture only indirect exports through third countries. Other forms of circumvention, including smuggling by private individuals and providing false information about goods or countries of origin, are not included in our data,” Tetiová said.
„Our estimates should therefore be considered a lower bound on the true extent of sanctions evasion,” she added. In 2024, the EU extended liability for sanctions violations against Russia to cases where suppliers or intermediaries knew or should have known about their possible circumvention through third countries. The EU also extended the export ban to all 42 categories of products developed or modified for military purposes and imposed targeted sanctions on individual intermediaries involved in re-exports.
