Russia’s Foreign Trade Has Increased, Not Decreased, Since 2022: Analysis

The deputy head of the Russian Presidential Administration, Maxim Oreshkin, has stated that Russia’s foreign trade has increased, not decreased, since Western sanctions were imposed on the country in 2022.

Speaking at the International Transport and Logistical Forum currently being held in St. Petersburg, Oreshkin said, “The West had a target of isolating Russia from the global economy; however, Russia’s foreign trade volumes did not decline from 2022 but increased in some areas. The goal of Western countries in respect of Russia in early 2022 was to disengage Russia from the global economy. Not to allow making payments, not to allow trading and thereby inflict damage. However, the result became different. If we look at the foreign trade volumes chart, our foreign trade volumes did not drop since 2022. They increased. The geography and currency of payments changed over that period.”

We can examine some of the basic data reflecting Oreshkin’s comments as follows. Figures are in billions; data is open source. 

Commodities

We can also examine Russia’s global data as concerns specific commodities:  

Analysis

Russia’s export trade is generally rather more diverse than is usually understood—comments such as ‘Russia is a gas station masquerading as a country’ managing to be both ridiculous and wide of the mark. It also misses the substantial rise of Russian coal exports, when politicians have been concentrating on oil. It illustrates that while politicians have tried hard to ban one commodity, others—more globally polluting—have simply taken their place. 

Yet it is comments like this that have shaped Western foreign policy when it comes to Russia. In fact, Russia is also a major producer and exporter of numerous non-energy products, including global supplies of gold, iron & steel, nuclear power technologies, wheat, and fish, among others. This is recognised by the Economic Complexity Index Technology (part of the OEC), which ranks Russia at 17 out of 96 most complex economies. For example, while global media has extensively covered the United States launch of its Artemis mission, But today (April 3) Russia quietly launched a Soyuz-2 rocket carrying a spacecraft for the country’s defence ministry. Russia launched 17 rockets into space during 2025. No one notices. While politicians and media twist narratives and shout loud to project an opinion, these statements can veer a long way from actual facts. While there is no doubt that certain measures have impacted negatively upon the Russian economy, neither have they had the total desired effect. In fact, as can now be seen, policies adopted to freeze Russia out of the global economy are now rebounding. That is, in truth, an instance where the true strengths of the Russian economy were misunderstood from the start. Little to no analysis was taken as concerns about how Russia would react—and the potential downside risk for the very same Western economies engaging in these measures.   

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