Leopards are free. That is good. However EU has more weapons in its disposal. Trade with Russia is one of them. Let us have a look at trade data from Eurostat to see what effect Russia's war on Ukraine had on EU trade. A thread 1/
Although the export to Russia fell by 47% after the start of the war (compared to similar period in 2021), businesses "have adapted" and exports to Russia's neighbours: Kazakhstan, Belorus, Uzbekistan and others rose by 48%. 2/ 
In 2021 from March to Novemeber, EU exports to Russia were 68 billion euro. It fell to 36 billion euro after the start of the war. Export to Russia's neighbours rose by 6 billion euro. Each additional euro exported to Russia does not contribute to victory for Ukraine. 3/
Looking at specific countries, the export to Russia fell in 24 EU countries. Hoever there are 3 countries which have increased there exports to Russia after the start of the war. These countries are Slovenia, Latvia and Bulgaria. 4/
Only two EU countries have exported less to Russia's neighbours: Sweden and Malta. All other countries have increased their exports considerably. 5/
One can argue that the effect of sanctions should be measured on the goods that were actually sanctioned. Unfortunately the same effect is observed. Although the export of the sanctioned goods to Russa fell by 72%, the export to Russia's neighbours has increased by 95%. 6/
The sanctioned export to Russia's neighbours 7/
Three biggest exporters of sanctioned goods (to Russia and its neighbours) are Germany, Poland ant Italy. The surprising fourth place is Lithuania with close to 2 billion euro of export compared to Germany's 4.4 billion euro. 8/
Looking at overal sanctioned export growth there are 5 countries for which have positive growth after start of the war. These are Greece, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia and Croatia. 9/
Over 2 thousand goods having 8 digit CN code have been sanctioned. This allows to look for country pairs and specific good export. Selecting the export which was worth more than 10 million euro and increased more than twice after the war has started gives us 108 data points 10/
Motor vehicle exports are sanctioned but very popular. Lithuania has exported 174 mln euro to Belarus with 200% growth. Germany has exported 422 mln euro to Belarus and Russia, growth ~700%. 11/
Czechia has exported mobile phones to Kazakhstan, Georgia, Armenia worth 233 mln euro. Exports in year 2021 were zero. 12/
Latvia's exported sparkling wine to Russia, 43 million euro and 300% growth, Greece exported jet fuel to Georgia worth 75 million of euro, from practically zero in 2021 and Poland exports of turbojets to Kazakhstan worth 122 million grew ~200%. 13/
These findings show that sanctions do not work as expected. It is not enough to put the sanctions of goods, the trade should be monitored and sanctions need to be enforced. This applies to all of the EU, as it is clear that practically all EU countries have this problem. 14/
The analysis used the data from Eurostat and the sanction codes. Sanctions on different goods took effect on different time periods and that there are quotas and exceptions associated with certain goods. These subtleties were ignored in the analysis. 15/
Full analysis with data, code and technical details can be found here: vzemlys.github.io/ruimpeks/eu_ru…. 16/
All data and code is available in github repository. #quarto and #rstats were used to make this analysis reproducible 17/
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