Six months into Moscow-Kyiv war, Russian goods still flowing to US

On a hot, humid East Coast day this summer, a massive container ship pulled into Port of Baltimore loed with sheets of plywood, aluminum rods and rioactive material — all sourced from fields, forests and factories of Russia.

President Joe Biden promised to “inflict pain” and deal “a crushing blow” on Vlimir Putin through tre restrictions on commodities like vodka, diamonds and gasoline in wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine six months ago. But hundreds of or s of unsanctioned goods worth billions of dollars, including those found on ship bound for Baltimore from St. Petersburg, Russia, continue to flow into U.S. ports.

Associated Press found more than 3,600 shipments of wood, metals, rubber and or goods have arrived at U.S. ports from Russia since it began launching missiles and airstrikes into its neighbor in February. That’s a significant drop from same period in 2021 when about 6,000 shipments arrived, but it still ds up to more than $1 billion worth of commerce a month.

In reality, no one involved actually expected tre to drag to a halt after invasion. Banning imports of certain items would likely do more harm to those sectors in U.S. than in Russia.

“When we impose sanctions, it could disrupt global tre. So our job is to think about which sanctions deliver most impact while also allowing global tre to work,” Ambassor Jim O’Brien, who hes State Department’s Office of Sanctions Coordination, told AP.

Experts say global economy is so intertwined that sanctions must be limited in scope to avoid driving up prices in an alrey unstable market.

Also, U.S. sanctions don’t exist in a vacuum; layers of European Union and U.K bans result in convoluted tre rules that can be confusing to buyers, sellers and policymakers.

For example, Biden ministration and EU released separate lists of Russian companies that cannot receive exports, but at least one of those companies — which supplies Russian military with metal to make fighter jets currently dropping bombs in Ukraine –- is still selling millions of dollars of metal to American and European firms, AP found.

While some U.S. importers are sourcing alternative materials elsewhere, ors say y have no choice. In case of wood imports, Russia’s dense birch forests create such hard, strong timber that most American wooden classroom furniture, and much home flooring, is me from it. Shipping containers of Russian items — groats, weightlifting shoes, crypto mining gear, even pillows — arrive at U.S. ports almost every day.

A breakdown of imported goods from Russia shows some items are clearly legal and even encouraged by Biden ministration, like more than 100 shipments of fertilizer that have arrived since invasion. Now-banned products like Russian oil and gas continued to arrive in U.S. ports long after announcement of sanctions due to “wind down” periods, allowing companies to complete existing contracts.

In some cases, origin of products shipped out of Russian ports can be difficult to discern. U.S. energy companies are continuing to import oil from Kazakhstan through Russian ports, even though that oil is sometimes mixed with Russian fuel. Tre experts warn that Russian suppliers are unreliable, and opaque corporate structures of most major Russian companies make it difficult to determine wher y have ties to government.

“It is a general rule: when you have sanctions, you’ll have all kinds of murky schemes and illicit tre,” said Russian economist Konstantin Sonin, who teaches at University of Chicago. “Still, sanctions make sense because even though you cannot kill 100% of revenues, you can reduce m.”

Many American companies are choosing to cut off Russian tre. Coors beer, for example, returned a shipment of hops to a state-owned Russian company in May as part of a commitment to suspend all business in country, said Molson Coors Beverage Co. spokeswoman Jennifer Martinez.

Russia and U.S. were never major tring partners, and so sanctioning imports is only a very small slice of retaliatory strategy. Restrictions on exports from U.S. –- of technology in particular –- cause more damage to Russian economy, and sanctioning Russian Central Bank has frozen Russia’s access to roughly $600 billion in currency reserves held across U.S. and Europe.

Noneless, sanctions carry a symbolic weight beyond financial harm y might inflict, particularly for American consumers horrified by war.

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AP Data journalist Larry Fenn in New York contributed to this report.

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Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org.