Democracy, Trade Networks, and International Condemnation of Russia Following the Invasion of Ukraine

The USA coordinated with over 40 other countries to impose wide-ranging multilateral sanctions against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. Concurrently, a larger number of states voted to condemn Russia in the UN General Assembly. Using an opportunity and willingness framework, we demonstrate that democratic states are more likely to engage in substantive and symbolic condemnation of Russia, while predominant positions in international trade networks will predict sanctions against Russia. When accounting for these two factors, we expect neither condemnation behavior to be associated with preexisting close trade ties to Russia. Using commodity trade data that allow us to identify trade in fuels and dual-use goods as well as aggregate trade, we find support for our expectations in multinomial logit models.