Despite sweeping export bans, European military goods continued reaching Moscow for nearly two years—routed through a handful of willing middlemen, according to a major new study.
A policy brief published by EconPol Europe and the ifo Institute for Economic Research on February 19, 2026, lays out in granular detail how European-made military components continued to pour into Russia long after Brussels formally banned them. Drawing on confidential Russian customs data—the kind that tracks every individual import declaration—the researchers trace the journey of 42 categories of weapons-relevant goods that were supposed to have been cut off the moment the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began.
The findings are uncomfortable. The export controls that Europe presented as a decisive response to Russian aggression were, for much of the first two years, riddled with loopholes large enough to drive military supply trucks through.
The ban that wasn’t really a ban
When the EU rolled out its first sanctions packages in early 2022, the messaging was clear: Russia would be choked off from the Western technology it needs to wage war. However, the actual situation unfolded differently. Rather than banning entire product categories outright, Brussels only restricted specific technical characteristics or particular end uses within those categories. A broad product code like HS 851712, for instance, covers everything from basic consumer handsets to secure military communications equipment—and was only partly off-limits.
The result? As late as February 2023, a full year after the tanks rolled into Ukraine, EU countries were still legally shipping military-relevant goods worth $40 million a month directly to Russia. That was 23 percent of pre-war monthly levels, according to the researchers. It was not until January 2024—almost two full years into the war—that all 42 military product categories were comprehensively banned.
The study notes that this approach “aimed to limit disruption to EU exporters” but also “made circumvention easier.” The reason is straightforward: “sanctioned and non-sanctioned goods are often close substitutes.”
The middlemen cashing in on war
Once direct shipments from the EU did start drying up, the trade didn’t vanish. It simply took a detour. Military goods made in Europe began showing up in Russian customs records with new stamps of transit: Turkey, China, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates.
Between September 2022 and January 2024, these indirect imports ran between $24 million and $58 million every single month—reaching as high as a quarter of what Russia had been importing from Europe before the war. Turkey alone accounted for more than a third of all rerouted EU military goods. China handled nearly a quarter, with Hong Kong at 16 percent and the UAE at 10 percent.
What makes this study different from earlier attempts to map sanctions evasion is the data itself. Previous research had to rely on correlations—watching EU exports rise to a third country and then watching that country’s exports to Russia climb in turn, without ever confirming it was the same goods. The confidential Russian customs records used here link the country of origin to the country of dispatch in a single transaction, removing the guesswork.
A 19-percent tax on a supposedly impossible trade
Perhaps the most striking number in the report is this one: the export ban raised effective trade costs for EU military goods headed to Russia by just 19 percent. In theory, an export ban is supposed to make trade infinitely expensive—prohibitively costly to the point of impossibility. Nineteen percent is what you might expect from a moderate tariff, not from a wartime embargo.
The researchers are careful to note that their estimates “capture only one observable channel of sanctions evasion, namely indirect exports via third countries.” Other methods—smuggling by individuals, relabeling products, and falsifying origin certificates—leave no trace in customs records. The true scale of leakage, they warn, is almost certainly larger.
When Europe finally got serious, it worked
There was a pivotal moment in the story. Starting in early 2024, the EU overhauled its approach. It expanded the bans to cover all 42 product categories without exceptions, tightened due diligence rules for exporters, and—critically—started going after the middlemen. Secondary sanctions were applied to individual firms in transit countries. Exporter liability was broadened to cover cases where companies “knew or reasonably should have known” their products might end up in Russia.
The impact was immediate and measurable. Indirect exports fell sharply to between $7 million and $17 million a month. By the final quarter of 2024, the flow had been cut to just 6 percent of pre-war levels.
But the researchers add an important caveat. They cannot rule out that evasion has simply adapted rather than disappeared. Instead of rerouting European goods through third countries, intermediaries may now be fraudulently replacing EU certificates of origin with their own, making the products invisible in the data.
What it means going forward
The bottom line from this research is not that sanctions don’t work. It’s that they didn’t work well enough, fast enough. The two-year lag between the invasion and a truly comprehensive ban gave Russia a long window to stockpile and adapt. And the concentration of evasion routes through just four countries suggests that targeted diplomatic and economic pressure on those specific transit hubs could yield outsized results.
As the debate over European defense spending and arms production intensifies, this study offers a sobering reminder: it matters little how many weapons Europe produces for Ukraine if the other side of the ledger—stopping European technology from powering Russian weapons—remains leaky.
