Global supply chains were already reeling from the Covid-19 pandemic. Now the Russia-Ukraine war has added a new wave of challenges, with sanctions and conflict restricting the flow of critical resources. Russia is ranked as the 16th-largest exporter by the World Trade Organisation, though it has particular strengths, with petroleum, coal and gas top of its trading list. But the scale of the pullback from Russian businesses is vast, says Brandon Daniels, president at supply chain management business Exiger. The company looked at 150 oligarchs and the 2,600 companies in which they have material ownership stakes, finding more than 200,000 supply links to US companies in the critical infrastructure and defence industrial base. “That is an enormous amount of commerce,” he says. It’s difficult to reorganise any supply chain, he says. “However, with pervasive sanctions in critical sectors and individuals that own large swaths of global companies, the challenge of finding, analysing and stopping those transactions is Herculean.”
Rull story : System shock: supply chains suffer in Russia-Ukraine war.
