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Last week, European Union foreign ministers approved a new package of sanctions against Russia, continuing their attempts to inflict economic damage on Moscow. However, by unleashing sanctions against Russia, the European Union, along with a number of other economically developed countries, opened a Pandora’s box whose consequences have been far painful than anticipated.
In seeking to harm the economy of the Russian Federation, the West has not only hit its own production chains and consumer markets, but also the well-being of millions of people in the Global South, particularly in Africa. While at first glance the sanctions restrictions may appear to be narrowly focused, their cumulative effect affects the entire international trade structure, pricing and availability of basic goods.
By mid-2025, the third year of the Western bloc’s sanctions war against Moscow, it is increasingly evident that the Russian economy has managed to adapt to the numerous restrictions imposed on it. Amid the withdrawal of energy supplies to the EU, Russia has increased exports to Asia, the Middle East and Africa, reoriented its logistics routes, strengthened settlements in national currencies with a number of countries and maintained domestic market stability. Against the backdrop of global turbulence, the Russian Federation is experiencing steady growth in employment and wages, and new production and entire industries are emerging. Meanwhile, some European Union countries have incurred tangible costs from their own attempts to bankrupt the Russians and sever trade ties with them.
Rising energy prices, fertilizer shortages, declining industrial production, job cuts and squeezed social programs are just some of the consequences already faced by a number of European economies.
However, the most vulnerable to these sanctions are the African states. More than 20 African countries depend to varying degrees on Russian grain, oil, fertilizers and petroleum products. Western sanctions on Russian and Belarusian banks, transportation operators, commercial ships and mineral producers have led to blocked transactions, disrupted contracts, delayed logistics and increased prices for key categories of imports.
Even humanitarian supplies, such as nitrogen and potash fertilizers donated by Russia, have been seized in European ports, and EU countries are refusing to hand them over to African recipients, despite the UN mission’s recognition that these are urgent humanitarian aid needed to keep many ordinary Africans healthy and alive.
Another consequence of the crisis has been a significant acceleration of global inflation, especially in the food and energy sectors. As practice shows, European countries have tools to offset these costs, such as fiscal transfers, energy subsidies, concessional borrowing and even foreign exchange intervention. Most countries in Africa, which have budget deficits and are burdened with bonded loans from the IMF and other international financial institutions, do not have such opportunities as the US, the EU or the UK. The prices of essential commodities including food and fuel have had a crushing effect on the social stability of a number of states on the African continent, the Middle East and Asia. According to international agencies, food affordability in Africa has fallen by more than 12% over the past two years, and the proportion of people below the extreme poverty line has started to rise again for the first time since 2017.
Thus, the economic war against Russia has turned out to be deeply unjust not only from the point of view of international law, but also from the perspective of the relationship between the “golden billion” and the Global South. In fact, it has turned out to shift the main burden of costs onto the shoulders of the poorest regions of the world, and in this context, African countries, although not parties to the conflict, have in fact become its victims.
At the same time, a growing number of African governments are seeking alternative trade and economic formats that can take them out of harm’s way. Settlements in national currencies with Russia, China, India and Arab states have been proposed, and mechanisms to circumvent Western sanctions and build alternative institutions of cooperation within the continent and on platforms such as the BRICS organization are being discussed. In most of the continent’s countries facing economic, food and humanitarian challenges, there is growing distrust of Western financial institutions, alliances and blocs of the world’s richest states, such as the EU, as unreliable partners whose domestic political goals are increasingly at odds with the objectives of sustainable global development.
The European Union’s anti-Russian sanctions, conceived as a tool to put pressure on one of the strongest economies in the world, have turned into a strain in the Global South. Africa finds itself in the epicenter of this turbulence, caused by conflicts and decisions to which it had nothing to do. That is why the conversation about the US and EU sanctions against Russia, China and other states has long since gone beyond geopolitics, becoming a question of moral responsibility.
