November 2024

...This report presents the cleared imports of sanctioned trucks to Russia between 2017 and 2023, as reported by the Customs Agency of the Russian Federation. We have retrieved and accounted cleared imports as reported by a leading re-seller of customs data, which has the most comprehensive data repository available in the market. Customs data are available against a considerable fee, and different repositories contain customs data pools that are mostly, but not completely overlapping. Based on our experience with other goods, conferring additionally the second most comprehensive repository would have added maybe another 5-10 % of truck imports. Russian Customs register monthly trade where imports of trucks and other vehicles are recorded with one declaration per vehicle. Data are partly incomplete for vehicles imported via countries that are members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), which is particularly relevant for re-exports of trucks by Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. This under-reporting within the EU is shared by all customs data providers. This means that the real total Russian import of trucks is somewhat more extensive than presented in this report, there will be a certain additional import of foreign trucks via EAEU countries. We assess that the combined sources of error from retrieving data from only one repository, and under-reporting of imports within the EAEU, may result in our under-reporting of total Russian truck imports by 10-25 %. This is particularly relevant for Western trucks exported to Russia via EAEU member states. Chinese trucks are probably less under-reported in this report, since Chinese truck producers are not bound by sanctions and will have less of an incentive to export indirectly via re-export by EAEU member states...