From February 2022 to today, the West has rolled out hundreds of individual sanctions packages against Russia. The aim: to cut Moscow off from global financial and technological flows. The result at the end of 2026: BMWs, Mercedes-Benzes and Volkswagens are driving around Moscow as if nothing had happened. Not one or two, not contraband, not a secret - 47,000 new vehicles of these three brands registered in Russia in the past year alone. That's the real efficacy of sanctions.

The numbers are staggering. Since the invasion began, more than 700,000 Western vehicles have been sold in Russia. In 2025 alone, roughly 130,000 cars from countries that imposed sanctions. These are not leftovers from 2021. Not foreign tourists. They are new or near-new vehicles, directly imported, registered, and sold on the Russian market.

How does the mechanism work? China plays the central role. Chinese intermediaries route Western cars through a third leg - in China they're classified as „new", on crossing the Russian border they're reclassified as „used" - and that way they reach Russian showrooms without any approval from the original manufacturer. A neat little scheme. A reclassification document in China costs a few hundred dollars. After that, the car travels as if it were an old machine.

Second channel - Kyrgyzstan. Shipments through Bishkek in the first two months of 2026 more than quadrupled compared with the same period last year. A small post-Soviet country with practically no domestic car market of its own - turning into the main route for Western cars heading to Moscow. That can't happen without the awareness of the top of the government.

But this is only the most visible point of the sanctions workaround. The same mechanism applies to microprocessors, industrial equipment, luxury goods, oil-and-gas equipment. China has cars and microchips. Turkey has financial channels and goods. Kyrgyzstan has a customs stamp. India pays for oil. The UAE - gold channels. Guinea - port services. Armenia - export addresses. Every link in the chain is legal. Every middleman is „unaware". Every ship sails under a foreign flag.

Analysts describe this not as a collapse of sanctions, but as their renting out. The sanctions system works - but it has a porous edge that simply can't be sealed, unless we prepare for a global economic shock. And no one wants that. China doesn't want it. Turkey doesn't want it. Even Brussels doesn't really want it - because European companies also profit from that grey zone.

For the Balkans this is a lesson. No sanctions regime is complete. When Brussels was telling Macedonia it had to introduce sanctions against Russia if it wanted into the EU, that was never a sincere demand. It was a loyalty test. Brussels itself can't enforce its own sanctions. But the question they don't want to answer - is there a sanctions regime in history that has stayed effective for more than three years? The answer is: no. And that means the West's real strategy against Russia has to be something else - but what exactly, none of the 27 EU prime ministers wants to say out loud.