Russia has become Ukraine’s biggest trading partner despite a breakdown in relations over Moscow’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula and backing for separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Trade turnover fell by more than two-thirds in the years after the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the ensuing conflict in the Donbas. It fell further after Russia suspended a free trade zone with Ukraine after Kiev entered into a free trade zone with the European Union entered in 2016.