Анализ структуры экспорта из Российской Федерации в Корейскую Народно-Демократическую Республику в условиях санкций (2014–2017 гг.)

Abstract

Western sanctions and a certain cooling in relations between Russia and Western Powers has pushed the former to the East. Actually, this definitely involuntary shift was over-blown by the Russian media in a propagandistic way, but was nothing more than a lousy attempt to find an appropriate shoulder to lean on while in confrontation with the US and Europe. Since in a geopolitical sense Russia has little alternative but to maintain relations with the DPRK. China is more than a match. Japan and South Korea historically have been constant friends of the US and military allies over the last 60 years. Southeast Asia is too remote, complicated and too dynamic aregion to meddle with (with the exception of Vietnam as a historical balance of spreading Chinese influence in Southeast Asia). But for Russia, over the last decade North Korea has been a different case and has looked like the best choice to provide “some” foreign policy in the region. The nuclear power that clearly proclaimed self-reliance as the official state ideology (Juche) appears, to a part of the Russian political establishment, to be the one state in Northeast Asia that Russia can truly influence. But is it really the true assumption? In this paper we will make a brief observation of the export structure and volume from the Russian Federation to the DPRK over the last 4 years, from 2014 to 2017. We use statistical data for the above-mentioned period from customs agencies of 8 federal districts of Russia that, although not constituent units of the country, exist for the operation of main federal government agencies. We don’t use the data from the Russian Federal State Statistics Service that was transferred in April 2017 under control of the Ministry of Economic Development; data from this Service doesn’t reflect the whole picture due to a lot of missing details and numbers