Finally stop all exports to Russia - that's the only way we can really meet Putin

Trade sanctions against Russia are intended to reduce economic output and prosperity in Putin's empire - and thus make the Kremlin ruler give in. Two ways can lead to the goal here.

The direct one is to deny Putin access to urgently needed goods from abroad - that is, to restrict exports. The indirect one: cutting off Putin from the trade revenues that he needs to pay for the foreign goods at all – from a German and European perspective, this is about import restrictions.

The catch with option two: there are already plenty of import hurdles for all sorts of products, but they are counteracted by the even higher billions in foreign exchange that Putin achieves by selling gas to Europe.

It would be all the more important to leverage exports. But there is far less going on here than you might think. Of course, the revenues of the German economy in the Russian business are clearly falling.

But the trade is by no means stopped. In the past three months, the revenues of German companies have each exceeded the billion euro mark.

Sure: Part of the business will continue to be operated for humanitarian reasons, especially the export of medicines (665 million euros in the second quarter).

Others are eaten at Russian destinations, such as detergent (34 million), drinks (17 million) or sugar (10 million).

But one thing is also clear: deliveries will continue to be made across the board. Germans and Russians are still in business in 90 of the 98 categories listed in the official statistics product index.

And above all: many of the deliveries help the regime to at least partially maintain normal economic operations. This applies, for example, to machines, which were the main export product in the second quarter with sales of 842 million euros.

Optical and electrical products (212 and 146 million respectively) and plastics (188 million) are also shipped to Russia on a larger scale. If these goods were easy to replace with supplies from China, for example, Putin would have done it long ago.

Putting a stop to this alone would not be enough to collapse the Russian war economy. But a rigorous export boycott would be much quicker than breaking the dependency on Russian gas.

And in the European interaction it would significantly increase the price that the continuation of the war of aggression demands from the Russians.

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