Despite the sanctions that have been imposed since the war in Ukraine, it appears that plenty of goods exported by Dutch companies still end up in Russia. That can be determined from research published on Tuesday from Statistics Netherlands (CBS) and the University of Groningen (RUG).
Although direct exports of goods to Russia have decreased since the scaling up of sanctions, exports to countries with an increased risk of sanctions circumvention have actually increased. Sanctioned goods would still end up in Russia via these countries. This indicates “possible circumvention,” the researchers write.
Statistics Netherlands and the RUG investigated the flows of goods from Dutch companies to various countries. Although sanctions circumvention is not directly observable, the researchers did notice that the export of goods sanctioned for Russia to some countries near Russia has increased “disproportionately”.
For example, to Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia and Turkmenistan, many more sanctioned goods were exported in 2022 and 2023 than in the period 2018 to 2021. More than 74 percent more in 2022, and 90 percent more in 2023.
Middlemen
In total, more than six billion euros in goods sanctioned for Russia were exported to high-risk countries in 2023. In 2021 this was only 4.6 billion.
Meanwhile, exports of sanctioned goods to Russia increased in these high-risk countries. “This could indicate that sanctioned goods from the Netherlands still reach Russia via these countries,” writes CBS.
This type of trade relatively often involves young, small companies, according to Statistics Netherlands. Companies that transport sanctioned products to a high-risk country, while they did not do this before the tightening of the sanctions. These are companies that usually act as middlemen; they do not produce the goods themselves.