Gray imports, Russia’s "shadow fleet," and "lost" cargo: How Moscow skirts sanctions after invading Ukraine

Contents

1. Non-lethal approach and follow-up hits: what’s wrong with sanctions on Russia
2. How missiles hitting Ukrainian homes are packed with sanctioned tech
3. Oil and gas still flowing — and still bringing in cash

Espreso breaks down how Russia gets around sanctions, boosts imports, feeds its military-industrial complex with key tech, and dodges the West’s attempts to hit its economy.

Non-lethal approach and follow-up hits: what’s wrong with sanctions on Russia

Let’s start with the numbers — as of January 19, 2025, Russia has been hit with 24,311 sanctions, according to Castellum.ai. Iran is next with 5,475, and Syria rounds out the top three with 2,879.

Now, about the mechanism itself — sanctions are a form of economic pressure meant to push a country into certain political decisions. They don’t destroy the target outright, just destabilize and weaken it.

Volodymyr Dubrovskyi, senior economist at CASE Ukraine (Center for Social and Economic Research), says these types of restrictions mostly aim to cut overall welfare, which hits GDP. He points to North Korea and Iran, both under long-standing sanctions well before Russia’s full-scale war. In both cases, people live in tough conditions, but their autocratic systems keep running.

"In democracies, a drop in living standards can lead to a change in government. But autocracies run on a different logic: even under extreme poverty, people rarely rise up. For example, in North Korea it didn't happen, perhaps, because the population is used to obeying," Dubrovskyi explains.

In Russia’s case, he says, it’s all about how the power vertical works — everything rests on the participants' belief in the leadership. If doubts start spreading, the system weakens and eventually collapses.

Still, back in early 2024 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he wasn’t satisfied with the sanctions. They haven’t stopped Russia from producing missiles. And the Russian nuclear sector is still untouched.

He also pointed out that each Russian missile carries critical components made in the West — dozens of them.

So now let’s look at how, despite all the heavy sanctions, American and European parts keep showing up inside Russian missiles.

How missiles hitting Ukrainian homes are packed with sanctioned tech

A clear example backing up Volodymyr Zelenskyy's claims is the Russian-made Zircon ballistic missile — one of which was shot down over Kyiv on March 25 last year.

As aviation expert Anatoliy Khrapchynskyi said on the Espreso TV channel, this type of ballistic missile is made almost entirely from foreign parts.

"It’s worth noting that the Zircon missile is almost completely made of foreign components. I doubt that Russia can manufacture them in large numbers or at an industrial scale," Khrapchynskyi said.

According to Andriy Yusov, spokesman for Ukraine's Main Intelligence Directorate, the Kinzhal and Kalibr missiles contain the highest number of sanctioned foreign components — more than fifty. But it’s not just them. Iskander missiles and Tornado-G MLRS shells also carry similar parts.

Among the imported components used in Russian missiles are microchips, processors, parts for navigation and communication systems, optics, and various types of sensors.

Research by the international Yermak-McFaul group shows that manufacturers of this equipment include U.S. companies like Analog Devices, Texas Instruments, Microchip Technology, Intel, and AMD, as well as Germany's Infineon Technologies and South Korea's Samsung. Despite their official exits from the Russian market, Russia’s military-industrial complex still gets access to their products through middlemen in countries not under sanctions.

One of the oldest and best-known ways is “parallel import.” This scheme requires a distributor registered in a third country — for example, Turkey — who’s willing to do business with Russia. That company then finds the needed products, buys them as if for Turkey, and sends them on to Russia. This way, Russia gets whatever it wants — from electric kettles to missile-ready microchips — all without the manufacturer’s knowledge or approval. In other words: smuggling.

To block this route, the U.S. introduced export restrictions. But a Reuters investigation back in December 2022 showed that supplies of key components for the Russian war machine were still getting through. Journalists traced one supply chain right back to Turkey, where many Russian firms relocated after the full-scale invasion began.

Another workaround involves dual-use goods — products not under sanctions that are used in civilian life. For example, common washing machines are freely imported to Russia, then taken apart for microchips that can be reused in weapons.

And let’s not forget shadow transit — goods moving from Europe to Asia through Russia that just "disappear." In these cases, buyers in Kazakhstan or Armenia never receive the equipment they paid for, because it quietly vanished while crossing Russia. This isn’t about theft — it’s about companies officially registered all over the world but actually controlled by Russians. These transactions are hard to track because there’s technically no crime: the final buyer doesn’t complain or report anything to law enforcement.

Oil and gas still flowing — and still bringing in cash

In 2021, most of Russia’s exports to European countries, as well as to Ukraine and Belarus, were oil and gas. But after the full-scale invasion began, especially by early 2023, Russia’s main buyers shifted to India and China, which now take in almost half of the aggressor state's exports.

According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, as cited by Deutsche Welle, India’s share of Russian exports in 2023 reached about 33%, while China’s was 17%. A year before the invasion, China’s share was around 15%, and others' was under 2%.

The Kyiv School of Economics estimates that roughly 70% of all crude oil exported by Russia is now moved by aging, uninsured vessels, what’s called the “shadow fleet.”

These are ships registered in offshore jurisdictions, used to skirt sanctions. Their role grew after the G7, along with Australia and the EU, introduced a price cap on Russian oil in December 2022. The cap was set at $60 per barrel. Later, the rules were adjusted: $100 for diesel and $45 for other oil products.

Because these shadow ships aren’t legally Russian, the price cap doesn’t apply to them.

The Guardian reports that around 600 old ships make up this unofficial fleet, handling logistics for about 70% of Russia’s oil exports. Shadow vessels now move 10% of all global oil shipments — roughly 1.7 million barrels a day.

Still, this workaround hasn’t gone unnoticed. A large section of the UK’s sanctions list, released on February 24, 2025, directly targets this fleet.

It includes 40 vessels that are now banned from forming legal or financial ties with the UK, meaning they can no longer operate freely in waters under British jurisdiction.

In just the past six months, those 40 ships transported Russian oil products worth over $5 billion.

According to the UK government portal, the total number of sanctioned Russian oil tankers has now reached 133.

One of the key weaknesses of the sanctions system, however, is that it reacts after the fact. Restrictions are placed on methods that already exist, methods that keep Russia’s military-economic machine running rather than preventing new ones from emerging.

Still, one thing is clear: no matter how adaptive the Central Bank of Russia may be, the aggressor’s economy is taking serious hits. And the "patches" keeping it afloat aren’t built to last.