A Financial Times investigation reveals that roughly one billion dollars worth of goods moved from the European Union never reached buyers in Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, effectively getting stranded in transit through Russia. The paper labeled this phenomenon the ghost trade, noting that the shipments were sent in 2022 after the start of Moscow’s special operation.
The report points to irregularities in customs declarations that suggest Russia used intermediaries, agents, or suppliers to list fake destinations for EU-bound cargo. This mislabeling helped Moscow retain access to strategic European goods, according to the Financial Times.
It also notes that immediately after the operation began there were about two billion dollars in EU-origin goods imported into Russia under the guise of transit to other nations.
EU officials have stated that some of these items could have dual uses, including aerospace components, optical equipment, gas turbines, and broadcast technology, raising concerns about potential military or intelligence applications.
Estonian Foreign Ministry Deputy Chancellor for Legal and Consular Affairs Erki Kodar questions the destination logic, asking who actually needed these goods at that moment in the region and pointing the finger at Russia as the prime beneficiary.
Lithuania — Kazakhstan
According to the Financial Times, Lithuanian exporters sent about 28 million dollars worth of dual-use items to Kazakhstan more than a year before the NWO, yet Kazakhstan received only nine million dollars worth, suggesting a significant mismatch in reported volumes. A project valued at 84 million dollars in goods left Lithuanian records, while Kazakhstan reported 11 million tons of products.
The publication asserts that Western nations are pursuing tighter controls to curb shipments through third countries to Russia. Journalists estimate that the actual scale of ghost trade from Europe to Russia involving restricted goods exceeds a billion dollars and aligns with broader international trade data, prompting calls for stricter export controls and sharper sanctions.
Elina Rybakova, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, comments that inconsistencies in world trade data are not unusual but warrant closer attention to export controls and sanctions compliance. This perspective underscores the need for clearer reporting and stronger enforcement in global trade, as cited by the Financial Times.
On February 25, the European Union prohibited the transit of dual-use goods through Russia, including integrated circuits and thermal imagers, marking the anniversary of the NWO start. Lithuania urged expanding the list of dual-use items subject to transit bans, while Estonia advocated stopping transit altogether except for humanitarian shipments.
Bloomberg reported on April 20 that when preparing for the eleventh sanctions round, the G7 would discuss a complete export ban on Russia. The idea is to halt all shipments except those already sanctioned, with further reductions in the forthcoming package. Later, Bloomberg noted that the EU plans to adjust the list of allowable imports without specifying new items, while considering measures to block exports to intermediaries that route goods to Russia.