By KYIV. March 6 (Interfax-Ukraine) – The Russian Federation appears to be successfully circumventing European Union and G7 sanctions in order to obtain critical semiconductors and other technologies for the war in Ukraine, Bloomberg wrote on March 4, citing an unnamed senior European diplomat.
“Russian imports in general have largely returned to their pre-war 2020 levels and analysis of trade data suggests that advanced chips and integrated circuits made in the EU and other allied nations are being shipped to Russia through third countries such as Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Kazakhstan, the diplomat said, pointing to those private assessments,” the article reads.
Similar patterns can be traced in hundreds of product categories, but they are especially acute when it comes to modern chips and integrated circuits that can be used for military purposes, the diplomat said.
He also noted that deliveries from China to Russia had also increased, as Beijing plays an increasingly important role in supplying Moscow.
According to the publication, information collected by the Geneva-based Trade Data Monitor indicates that some sanctioned goods – particularly advanced semiconductors – are being diverted to Russia via third countries, many of which abruptly changed their trading habits following Russia’s invasion. In some cases, the exports to Russia of technologies that could be used for military purposes in Ukraine have gone from effectively zero to millions of dollars.
“Kazakhstan provides a key example. In 2022 the Central Asian nation exported $3.7 million worth of advanced semiconductors to Russia, up from a mere $12,000 worth the year before the war started… The data show Turkey, Serbia, the UAE and a half-dozen other economies in Eastern Europe and Central Asia helped make up the shortfall. Meanwhile, shipments of high-tech components to those countries from the allied nations surged by a similar amount,” Bloomberg writes.
At the same time, there are challenges in tracking shipments as buyers sometimes use complex corporate mechanisms and distribution models to hide the final destination of their goods.
