Russia spent $130 billion extra on sanctioned goods since 2022 — and it still couldn’t find replacements for some of them, Latvia says

The Constitution Protection Bureau (SAB) — Latvia's spy agency — has released an intelligence-based report showing that Western sanctions have already inflicted hundreds of billions of dollars in losses on Russia's economy, according to Russia's own internal estimates obtained by SAB. The report, published last week, combines intercepted Russian institutional forecasts with SAB's own analysis — and concludes the real damage is larger than Russia's internal numbers suggest.

Russia's own economists count the damage

Latvia's SAB published internal estimates produced by several Russian institutions — documents created for domestic planning, not public consumption. Those estimates confirm that between 2022 and 2025, Russia spent approximately $130 billion extra — $32.5 billion annually — to buy sanctioned Western goods through intermediaries at inflated prices. The figure excludes cases where Russia found no substitute for a particular Western product at all.

Russia's own forecasts project at least $136 billion in further losses by 2030 from Western restrictions — part of a total $175.5 billion in projected foreign trade losses that Russian planners are now factoring into their medium-term economic models. The largest single risk, at $136 billion, comes from the combination of direct sanctions, secondary sanctions on Russia's trade partners, and Western trade embargos, and US trade tariffs.

Even the pullback by Russia's so-called "friendly countries" is factored into the internal estimates: Moscow privately acknowledges that many non-Western trade partners now regard Russia as a toxic counterpart, amplifying its losses beyond what sanctions alone would produce, according to the report.

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Export markets have taken a structural hit. Comparing 2021 and 2025 data from the full report, Russia's iron ore exports fell by 40%, iron and steel by 20%, chemical products by 35%, and timber and cellulose by around 50%. Russian internal forecasts indicate the country will not recover these markets within the next five years — contradicting Moscow's public claims of successful trade reorientation.

The energy sector carries the steepest potential exposure. If the EU implements a full energy embargo and countries like China, India, and Türkiye reduce their Russian oil and gas imports, Russia's own institutional estimates project losses of approximately $216.5 billion in the energy sector alone over five years — $43.3 billion annually. SAB notes that this energy estimate alone exceeds Russia's total forecast of foreign trade losses, confirming that the overall projection is conservative.

Russia's bureaucrats know, Putin probably doesn't

SAB assesses that Russia's own internal damage estimates are themselves undercounts. They typically cover only direct sectoral effects and exclude indirect costs, such as higher import and logistics prices, lower tax revenues, and higher prices for the Russian population.

More consequentially, SAB assessed that Putin himself likely receives a sanitized version of these reports — one that leads with propaganda narratives about successful adaptation rather than the loss figures his own economists are documenting. Internal reports routinely open with formulations like "Russia's economy is successfully overcoming sanctions" and "Russia has effectively re-oriented its trade from the West to friendly countries."

That gap between what Russian economists calculate and what Putin is apparently told makes it highly unlikely, in SAB's view, that economic pressure alone will change his course — even if Russia's economic crisis deepens.

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What lifting sanctions would actually mean

Russia has been working through diplomatic channels, including peace negotiations over Ukraine, to secure sanctions relief. SAB warns that lifting sanctions — even partially — would not lead Russia to address domestic economic problems. The freed resources would, it assesses, accelerate military rearmament, fund influence operations globally, and increase support for Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, and paramilitary groups in Africa.

"Russia’s own estimates prove that Western sanctions and other economic restrictions are an effective tool for constraining Russia," the report reads.

The report's bottom line is calibrated: sanctions will not force Russia to end its war against Ukraine in the short term. But they are already cutting the financial capacity Russia needs to sustain that war and rearm for future conflicts — including against NATO. The full potential of the sanctions has not yet been realized, and they can be extended further still.