A recent pricing analysis of European luxury items sold in Moscow shows something the European Union prefers not to advertise: Russian consumers are still buying sanctioned European goods, and often paying more than double what the same items cost in Europe.

This is not a story about whether luxury is morally necessary.

It is a story about whether sanctions are achieving their stated purpose.

If the objective is to deny access to high-end goods, the marketplace is openly signalling failure.

The goods have not disappeared.

They have simply become more expensive, more circuitous, and more profitable for everyone in the chain except the end buyer.

The mechanism is straightforward.

European restrictions target direct exports above a low value threshold, but global commerce does not stop at the edge of Brussels’ legal imagination.

Items can be sold legally to intermediaries in third countries, then re-exported onward.

The result is a new logistics economy: traders, freight firms, and middlemen monetising the gap between what is banned on paper and what remains achievable in practice.

The predictable consequence is not moral correction but price inflation.

In Moscow, the same watch or handbag becomes a premium not only of brand but of route.

Sanctions become a surcharge.

They punish the buyer while rewarding the workaround.

This is the uncomfortable truth about much of Europe’s sanctions regime: it is often designed for symbolic clarity rather than operational realism.

It looks decisive in official statements, but it is porous in the real world, where trade routes adapt quickly and compliance becomes a game of paperwork thresholds.

Supporters of the policy will argue that cost increases are the point, that inconvenience is a form of pressure.

That argument might hold if the pain landed on decision-makers.

But luxury markets are built for people who can absorb inconvenience.

What actually emerges is stratification: those with access to networks pay the mark-up and carry on; those without pay more for less, or are locked out entirely.

Now to a related claim that has circulated alongside this story: that Russia is “earning double” thanks to new markets and an oil price windfall as an outcome of sanctions.

Verified reporting contradicts that.

Russia’s oil exports have faced steep discounts to global benchmark prices, and producers have required tax relief measures to preserve profitability under sanction pressure.

That is not a windfall; it is adaptation under constraint.

This distinction matters, because it exposes the core weakness of poorly targeted sanctions.

Europe can simultaneously fail to stop luxury goods from reaching Moscow while also failing to deliver the decisive economic shock its architects promised.

In one channel, the restrictions are circumvented.

In another, the costs are real but managed.

What thrives is the space in between: opacity, intermediaries, and a growing industry of sanctioned commerce.

The most corrosive element is institutional hypocrisy.

European bureaucracies demand meticulous compliance from businesses and citizens, yet they tolerate sanction structures that predictably incentivise circumvention.

Then, when the public notices that banned goods are still for sale, the answer is rarely democratic accountability.

It is procedural language and quiet indifference.

If sanctions are to be credible, they must be enforceable, strategically coherent, and morally honest about who pays the price.

Otherwise, they become what this luxury trade now resembles: a theatre of virtue that leaves the market intact, shifts profits to middlemen, and taxes ordinary people through inflated costs.

A serious policy does not measure success by the elegance of its press release.

It measures success by outcomes.

And when a sanctioned handbag is still on the shelf—just at double the price—the outcome is not control.

It is a business model.