Sweden is investigating export growth to Russia’s neighboring countries.

The Swedish government instructed the country’s Chamber of Commerce to check the reasons for the sharp increase in exports to countries neighboring the Russian Federation. In a statement from the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it is reported that these statistics may be related to attempts to circumvent anti-Russian sanctions. The Minister of Foreign Trade of Sweden, Johan Forssell, emphasized that if Western countries seek to weaken Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, then sanctions must be observed.

According to the Swedish Statistics Bureau, in 2023 the volume of exports from Sweden to Kazakhstan increased by 140% compared to the previous year and to Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan by 200%. The Embassy of Kazakhstan in Sweden reported that the trade turnover between these two countries in January-November 2022 amounted to $282M, almost 40% higher than the previous year’s period. At the same time, exports from Sweden to Kazakhstan increased by 22.3%, amounting to $189.3M.