The study estimates how much European Union trade sanctions and firms’ voluntary decisions to suspend operations in Russia contributed to the decline in Spanish trade with Russia after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It combines firm-level customs transactions for 2019–2023 with detailed EU sanctions at the product level and the Yale-CELI and KSE Leave-Russia lists of companies that curtailed Russian operations, using a difference-in-differences approach.
Spanish exports of sanctioned products to Russia fell by 64 percent relative to unsanctioned products, while imports of sanctioned products fell by 92 percent. Among firms that voluntarily suspended Russian activities, exports of unsanctioned products fell by 98 percent and imports by 89 percent; trade in sanctioned products virtually disappeared. Voluntary suspensions also broadened the impact beyond formally sanctioned goods: they increased the number of affected export products by 71 percent and import products by 12 percent.
Overall, sanctions alone reduced Spanish exports to Russia by an estimated 10 percent, while voluntary suspensions produced an additional 20 percent reduction, bringing the combined decline to 30 percent. On the import side, sanctions reduced trade by 34 percent and voluntary suspensions by another 24 percent, for a combined 58 percent decline. The study finds no evidence that Spanish firms systematically circumvented sanctions through neighboring countries; the limited rerouting associated with voluntary suspensions amounted to only about 5 percent of the exports these firms lost in Russia.
