“Having leapt never look back”: Who stays with Russia and how are imports redistributed?

Abstract

We examine the division of countries according to their political attitude towards Russia after the launch of a special military operation in Ukraine and the introduction of large-scale sanctions, and illustrate the importance of sanctions and political attitude to Russia for countries’ exports there with the available statistical data. The countries are clustered by their participation in sanctions pressure on Russia and voting on six UN resolutions condemning Russia’s actions. Except for hostile countries, we distinguish three groups of friendly countries — “cautious” (voting for UN resolutions), “wavering” (non-systematic voting), and “sympathetic” (voting against resolutions or ignoring them). According to mirror data on foreign trade with Russia, most countries which increased their exports to Russia in 2022 belong to the “sympathizers” group. Relying on the evidence from the EU and China, we demonstrate that imports of sanctioned goods are redistributed more actively than other imports. We list major products which imports were redistributed successfully or unsuccessfully.