Against the backdrop of sanctions, Russia sold a record volume of cartridges to the United States in 30 years

Despite US sanctions against Russian small arms, deliveries of cartridges from RUSSIA to this country broke a record. American partners of Russian manufacturers took advantage of a loophole in sanctions by extending imports, RBC learned

In 2021, the supply of Russian cartridges and their components to the United States in monetary terms set a record in the recent history of Russia - since the early 1990s. This is evidenced by the foreign trade data of the US Census Bureau (an analogue of Rosstat), which RBC got acquainted with. it took ten months to update the record - even the new sanctions from Washington did not prevent this, which were directed precisely against the import of small arms and ammunition from Russia.

In the ten months of this year, American companies imported $157.9 million worth of Russian firearms cartridges. The previous record was set in 2016 ($148 million for the entire year) and was broken thanks to deliveries in October 2021 by $15.4 million. For comparison : for the whole of 2020, the import of Russian cartridges to the United States amounted to about $120 million.

In physical terms, the import of Russian cartridges to the United States in January-October 2021 exceeded 7.7 thousand tons compared to 5.2 thousand tons for the entire last year, according to the UN Comtrade database. In 2016, the import of cartridges and their parts by weight was about 6 thousand tons.