Russia may be buying European microchips to circumvent sanctions.
This was reported by the Bloomberg agency with reference to the top diplomat of the European Union. According to him, trade is carried out through the mediation of third countries, Turkey, Kazakhstan and the United Arab Emirates, which are not part of the sanctions.
The diplomat noted that despite the punitive measures of Brussels and the G7, Russia’s imports have reached pre-war levels. Imports from Asian countries, including China, also increased.
According to the information of the Geneva-based international agency that monitors trade indicators, Kazakhstan sold microchips and semiconductors to Russia for $3.7 million last year. The previous year it was 12 thousand dollars.
Electronic components worth 163 million dollars a year were directly sold to Russia from the European Union, USA, Britain and Japan. Last year it was 60 million.
During the same period, Russia increased its purchases of electronics from Kazakhstan, Turkey, Serbia and the UAE. The imports of these countries, which almost do not produce these products, from the countries that imposed sanctions on Russia, increased sharply.
According to the analysis of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, imports from Western countries of Kyrgyzstan, Armenia and Turkey have also increased. According to the bank’s statistics, the exports of the European Union, the United States and the United Kingdom to Russia decreased by half from May to July last year. At the same time, the growth of imports from Europe and the USA to Armenia and Kyrgyzstan exceeded 80%.
These countries doubled their exports to Russia in the same period. The bank attributes this trend to new trends in trade. According to information, the export of cars, electronics, agricultural machinery from the European Union to Central Asia increased mainly due to Kazakhstan.