By Ed Conway
LONDON (Sky News) — Britain’s car industry has insisted that an unprecedented 2,000-percent increase in vehicle exports to Azerbaijan has nothing to with Russia and is explained by the fact that the former Soviet state is a “flourishing market in its own right”.
Sky analysis released on March 18 has found that the British car sector sent another £40 million worth of cars to Azerbaijan in the first month of this year, raising fresh questions about whether those cars were being sent there to circumvent sanctions on Russia.
New data from HM Revenue & Customs shows that while direct car exports to Russia remain at zero, where they have been since the imposition of sanctions in 2022, in January £43 million worth of cars were sent to Azerbaijan, the former Soviet state neighboring Russia.
That meant Azerbaijan, which hitherto had rarely made the top 75 export destinations for British cars, is now the 12th biggest foreign market, by value, for British-made cars: above Switzerland, Canada and Spain.
UK carmakers have pledged not to send cars to Russia, with sanctions formally banning the export of “dual use” items which could be repurposed as weapons in the Ukraine war. There are separate sanctions specifically banning the trade of cars worth over £42,000.
