Recently, the EU has been blindly following the US in imposing nine rounds of sanctions on Russia, with the backlash effect becoming more pronounced and adding to the woes of the European economy.

　　Since the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, the EU has implemented a package of economic sanctions that have significantly reduced exports to Russia, but the repercussions of EU sanctions on Russia have strained the supply situation in Europe, with energy and commodity prices soaring and imports increasing significantly.

　　The latest statistics published by Eurostat last December show that EU imports of goods trade to Russia rose rather than fell in the first 10 months of 2022, reaching €181.2 billion, up 42.6% year-on-year. During the same period, the EU's trade deficit with Russia widened from €54.1 billion to €134.6 billion. ECB data also showed that non-energy goods and services trade imports into the eurozone from Russia also rose in the first half of 2022 due to higher prices.

　　Analysts point out that the multiple rounds of sanctions have caused huge losses for European companies, not only in terms of lost markets, but also in terms of increased production costs due to escalating energy prices. People's real wages have seriously shrunk and their purchasing power has decreased.

　　An ECB report noted that while some companies pulled some of their big brands out of Russia, overall, eurozone holdings of Russian assets fell by only 10% between the end of the fourth quarter of 2021 and the end of the second quarter of 2022. Following the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, "FDI positions remained broadly unchanged".

　　For now, the energy crisis in the European region remains intractable. The International Energy Agency recently "sounded the alarm" about the energy supply situation in Europe this year. Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the IEA, said that the EU is expected to face a shortage of around 27 billion cubic metres of gas in 2023, representing around 6.8% of the EU's total gas baseline demand. The Economic Forecast 2023 report published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development also says that Europe will face a very serious and difficult economic situation if the current energy crisis worsens.

　　According to the European Commission, the gross domestic product (GDP) of both the EU and the eurozone will grow by only 0.3% in 2023, far below the 2.3% growth forecast in the spring economic outlook report. Many analysts have given a more pessimistic judgment that the eurozone economy will fall into negative growth in 2023.