Old-fashioned barter is on the rise in Russia's foreign trade for the first time since the 1990s, as companies seeking to outfox Western sanctions swap wheat for Chinese cars and flax seeds for building materials.
Even as Russia builds warm ties with China and India, the return of barter shows just how far the war in Ukraine has distorted trading relationships for the world's biggest producer of natural resources, three decades after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union ushered in Russian economic integration with the West.
The United States, Europe and allies have imposed more than 25,000 different sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine that started in 2022 and the 2014 annexation of Crimea in a bid to sink Russia's $2.2 trillion economy and undermine support for President Vladimir Putin.
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