On October 10, 2023, George Volski, the first deputy chairperson of the Parliament of Georgia, stated in the POSTV program “Post Analytics” that the trade between the EU and Russia has increased. According to Volski:
- Europe’s share in Russia’s trade sphere is 32%, which is 10 points higher than that China’s share;
- The amount of Russian imports to the EU increased by more than 200 billion;
- 15 million cubic meters of gas were supplied to Europe through Ukraine, and now this amount has tripled.
Some of the claims voiced by the MP are false and manipulative, in fact: 1) in 2023, the share of the EU in trade with Russia is less than that of China; 2) Trade between the European Union and Russia exceeded 200 billion EUR in 2022, but in 2023, it decreased sharply and according to the data of the first 8 months, it amounts to less than 62 billion EUR; 3) Currently, about 43 million cubic meters of gas are supplied to Europe via Ukraine per day, but this number was more than 100 million before the war.
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Trade between the EU and Russia will decrease sharply in 2023, and China’s share of trade with Russia will exceed that of the EU;
Due to the sanctions imposed on Russia in 2022, the trade between the EU and Russia decreased sharply in 2023. In the second quarter of this year, the share of Russia in the trade of the European Union was less than 2% – the share of imports fell to 1.7%, while exports fell to 1.4%. This is when in 2002-2022 these numbers ranged from 7-10% and 4-6%, respectively. According to Eurostat, in the first 8 months of 2023, the European Union imported about 35 billion euros and exported 26 billion EUR to Russia. In the same period of 2022, these figures were 152 and 39 billion EUR, respectively, and the turnover for the whole year reached 259 billion EUR.
When it comes to China, the European Union was ahead of it in terms of trade figures with Russia in 2022; however, in the first 7 months of this year, the trade turnover between Russia and China amounted to 134 billion USD, and up to September it reached 176 billion USD, surpassing the European Union by about 100 billion. According to Reuters, trade relations between Russia and China have been growing steadily in recent months.
False and manipulative information about the increase in EU’s trade with Russia since the beginning of the war in Ukraine has been spread in the past as well. Read more in the Myth Detector article:
- Statistical Information on EU Trade with Russia is Disseminated in a Manipulative Manner (in Georgian)
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Significantly less gas is supplied to Europe via Ukraine compared to February 2022
George Volski claimed that 15 million cubic meters of gas used to be supplied to Europe via Ukraine, but now this figure has tripled. In fact, this year, an average of 40 million cubic meters of gas is supplied to Europe through pipelines located in the territory of Ukraine, although in February-March 2022, this figure exceeded 100 million cubic meters per day. The lowest amount through Ukraine was recorded in January-February 2023, when pipelines carried about 25 million cubic meters of gas per day. As of May 11, 2022, the Sokranivka pipeline stopped working because a large part of it fell into the zone of Russian occupation, due to which the “Ukrainian gas transmission system operator” was unable to establish control over it.
It should be noted that the general dependence of the European Union on Russian gas is decreasing. Before the war, they imported 40% of gas from Russia, and in the second quarter of 2023, this figure dropped to 21% (in the case of oil, the volume of imports decreased from 30% to 2% in the same periods). From the second half of 2022, the supply of gas through the Yamal and Nord Stream pipelines, which was the main export route for Russia, was stopped.
Disinformation about the alleged increase of Russian gas imports by the European Union has been debunked by “Myth Detector” in the past. Read more here:
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