The effect of Russian unfriendly-country list and import ban: Gravity framework test

Abstract. Since 2021, Russia has maintained a list of unfriendly countries. This list and the import ban list introduced in 2014 are some of the main economic sanctions Russia uses to influence trading partners. This paper attempts to quantify the effect of putting a trading partner on the list of unfriendly countries compared to the Russian import ban. The study uses the data on trade flows between Russia and its trading partners from the UN COMTRADE database for select agri-food products. Employing a gravity framework, we argue that countries added to the unfriendly list in 2022 often had already lost a significant part of exports due to the 2014 Russian import ban introduction. Thus, such countries did not experience significant change compared to the effects of the Russian import ban. Based on this conclusion, Russia has a limited capacity to apply such retaliatory measures to Western countries regarding agri-food trade. Our results also demonstrate that the presence of the import ban drives export flows of the studied products, while the GDP of the trading partner also plays an important role, albeit with a lower magnitude. Keywords: international trade, Russian import ban, unfriendliness, gravity model. JEL Classification: C01, C23, F14, Q1, J10, J11