The Great Disappearance - How Russia Circumvents Sanctions and Takes the Statistics With It

In Russia’s customs data for the year 2025, a gap of historic proportions has opened up. Around 180 categories of technically advanced goods have simply vanished. These are primarily electronics and industrial equipment, precisely the goods subject to EU and US sanctions. Investigations show, however, that these deliveries were not discontinued. They were made invisible. Importers continue to operate, demand remains intact, only the entries in the central customs database are missing. The state erases the trail.

The purpose is obvious. By no longer recording the data, the view of so called grey imports is meant to be obscured. Supply chains for sanctioned technology, above all for the military industrial complex, remain in the dark. New punitive measures against suppliers are to be avoided by ensuring that, officially, there is nothing left to sanction. The method is crude, but effective: what is not registered does not exist statistically.

The analysis reads like a sober situation report on the actual state of the sanctions. It does not document their existence, but their circumvention. Where tracked excavators, machining centers, and lathes appear in three digit million dollar amounts, it becomes clear that the restrictions have not led to a breakdown, but to a reorganization of supply routes. This is not about emergency solutions, but about targeted provisioning. Accumulators, generators, and computing equipment exemplify those goods that are officially classified as civilian but are indispensable in practice for military production and operational capability. The selection is not accidental, but functional: machines for manufacturing, parts for repair, systems for energy supply. Together, they secure the continued operation of industrial and military structures despite formal prohibitions. In conjunction with the thinned out customs data, it becomes clear what the sanctions actually achieve: they do not disappear from politics, but from the statistics. What remains visible is only what could no longer be completely concealed. This very normality of circumvention is the central finding of the analysis. It shows that sanctions may be enacted, but their enforcement has become so porous that circumvention has long since become part of everyday business.

Russia has long experience in concealing publicly relevant information. The corporate register has for years restricted access to ownership data of strategically important companies. The land registry shields the assets of corruption suspects from scrutiny. Even academic work has disappeared when plagiarism allegations threatened. What is new, however, is the scale. For the first time, the state is directly interfering with a data foundation that is indispensable for economic planning. The customs statistics themselves are being damaged. What is striking is how consistently this step has been implemented. In the past, there were reclassifications and disguises. Iranian combat drones were listed on paper as boats. Such maneuvers were exceptions. Now nothing is reclassified anymore. The goods are not shifted into other categories. They vanish entirely. Companies that previously imported only microchips suddenly report nothing at all to customs. They no longer appear in the data, even though they are demonstrably still operating.

The second analysis sharpens the picture and makes the mechanism behind the disappearing customs data tangible. It shows highly specialized procurement firms whose import volumes in 2023 were in some cases substantial and which by no means disappeared from the market in 2025, but largely vanished from the official statistics. Only four companies still show measurable values in the first quarter of 2025, visible as narrow orange bars on the broad light blue fields of the previous year. This break is not the expression of an economic collapse, but of a statistical one. The companies continue to exist, they continue to operate, but their deliveries are no longer fully recorded. Particularly striking is that precisely highly specialized actors are affected, whose business models cannot easily be shifted elsewhere. Where double digit million dollar amounts were still recorded in 2023, there is now officially nothing. The analysis thus documents not a retreat from the import business, but a deliberate omission. It shows how sanctions are not only circumvented, but simultaneously rendered invisible: the flows of goods continue, while the numbers that would document their existence disappear from view. For this reason, great caution is always warranted when reports circulate claiming Russia has major procurement problems - too often statistical gaps are confused with real scarcity, and the disappearance of data with the disappearance of goods. The only way to demonstrate this clearly is through investigative research.

A look at the figures from the tax authorities confirms this picture. There are no indications of mass insolvencies, no shutdowns, no collapses in turnover. The companies exist, they trade, they earn money. Only customs no longer sees them. And that is precisely what makes the intervention so serious. The statistics show a consistent zero for these product groups in 2025. Month after month. Across all affected codes. Simultaneously and comprehensively. As early as 2024, imports of sanctioned products into Russia amounted to around 22 billion dollars, primarily in machinery, electronics, and metal processing. These goods are dual use. In practice, however, they regularly end up in the war. Lithium ion batteries are officially classified as civilian goods, but are indispensable for drones. Machine tools and machining centers are primarily demanded by arms manufacturers. Previous investigations in other sectors have shown this as well.

In 2025, the structure of the official import statistics changed abruptly. Computer assemblies, routers, integrated circuits, video cameras, radio components, frequency generators, radar technology, navigation equipment, electric motors, and equipment for chip manufacturing disappeared from the leading positions. Drilling machines, industrial furnaces, and other heavy equipment also no longer appear. In total, around 180 positions for which deliveries have officially fallen to zero. In every single case, this concerns technology whose export to Russia is restricted by Western decisions. Yet in the first three months of 2025 alone, goods worth more than 5.7 billion dollars were imported that fall under these restrictions. Analysis of the monthly customs reports shows that the corresponding codes disappeared from the so called mirror at the end of 2024. Three features stand out: the simultaneous removal of all positions, the continued existence of highly specialized import firms, and the complete absence of these goods from the statistics of the following year. Taken together, this points to a deliberate, large scale corruption of the register. Technically, much suggests that when customs declarations for these goods are processed, the information is simply no longer stored on the central customs servers. Other goods continue to appear properly in the database. This is therefore not a system failure, but a selective decision. The conspiracy is banal, but effective. The consequences extend far beyond sanctions policy. If this data basis becomes unusable, state planning loses its foundation. Forecasts of industrial development become guesswork. Rosstat will continue to deliver figures that no one can seriously verify. Research institutes dealing with the economy and production are operating blind. And ministries lack reliable information for decisions that have real consequences.

The attempt to circumvent sanctions thus comes at a high price. It undermines the state’s ability to understand itself. In the short term, invisibility may be useful. In the long term, it damages governance, analysis, and credibility. What is disappearing here are not only data sets. It is the claim to still be able to rationally comprehend one’s own economy.