The bust, the boom and the sanctions in trade relations with Russia

ENNext to the growing tensions in global economic arena, the challenges for Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are often related to Russia’s actions and ambitions. Mutual economic relations have been particularly tense at the beginning of the 1990s, in 1995–1997 and then in 2007–2009, when Russia has imposed sanctions against the Baltic countries and has been putting economic, political or propagandist pressure on them. The current “sanctioning war” is seriously testing the mutual economic relations again and is raising the question whether there is a hope for normalization of trade relations in the nearest future between the Baltic countries and Russia. Thus, the article focuses on the trade dynamics between the Baltic countries and Russia over the period 2004–2016 and analyses the main factors that have influenced this trade dynamics. The article will also debate the outlook for trade relations to be normal again in the light of the sanctioning war between Russia and the EU and its allies.