After the start of the war, EU exports to Russia fell by 47%, to the CIS – increased by 48%

During the nine months of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the export of goods from the European Union to Russia decreased by 47%, and to the CIS countries – increased by 48% compared to the same period in 2021. This follows from Eurostat data, which are referred to by Euromonitor International and RBC.

According to the given data, the European Union exported goods worth 36.3 billion euros to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine (compared to 69.2 billion a year earlier). At the same time, 20.3 billion euros worth of goods from the European Union arrived in the CIS countries, namely: Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan (compared to 13.7 billion a year ago).

At the same time, exports from the specified CIS countries to Russia also increased – by almost 40%, or by 9.4 billion euros in monetary terms, according to data collected by RBC.

The head of the data research department of Euromonitor International Vaidotas Zemlis-Balevichus assumes that a significant part of the goods that come to the CIS countries from the European Union are redirected to Russia. Analysts of the American Silverado Center wrote about the same earlier.

Having analyzed the Eurostat data, Zemlis-Balevichus discovered more than a hundred possible “sanction anomalies”, by which he understands large exports that have increased at least twice since the start of the war, despite the sanctions imposed against Russia due to its invasion of Ukraine. Among such anomalies: deliveries of used cars from Lithuania to Belarus, smartphones and laptops from the Czech Republic to Kazakhstan, aviation kerosene from Greece to Georgia.

It is known that in the first half of 2022 Kazakhstan sharply increased the export of smartphones to Russia – more than two thousand times in dollar terms, according to the official statistics of Kazakhstan.

Greece, Cyprus, the Czech Republic and Estonia increased the supply of sanctioned goods to countries neighboring Russia by 3-5.5 times, Zemlis-Balevichus calculated. Exports of other countries grew more modestly, only Sweden and Malta did not increase their deliveries to the CIS.