Russia and the EU foreign trade in the XXI century: traditions and modernity

The article presents an analysis of the foreign trade of the Russian Federation and the European Union in the XXI century, especially in terms of Russian exports to the EU. The purpose of the article is to study the dynamics and structure of Russian exports and to identify both absolute and relative, as well as quantitative and qualitative changes in this process. The author comes to the conclusion that the EU as a market for Russian goods, while maintaining a generally traditionally high degree of importance, is becoming more and more unstable and therefore less and less attractive. The EU's role as Russia's leading export partner tends to decline – influenced by a number of factors that are largely objective for Russia, but not always and not fully so for the EU. In modern conditions, there is a gradual transformation of the commodity structure of Russian exports to the EU in the direction of reducing the share of raw materials. The study was conducted for the period 1995–2019 on the basis of data from the international statistical database of UNCTAD to ensure the reliability and comparability of the data. In the course of the research, the author used the following methods: analytical, statistical, scientific abstraction, induction and visualization method.