FOR about 1,500 years, high-value goods were moved from China, and perhaps other parts of Asia, to Europe and the Middle East via the Silk Road. The precise route varied over time, but it always ran through and involved local traders in parts of what we now call Central Asia.

Today, trade through Central Asia is bustling again, with the Caucasus also getting in on the act. But now the boom is in goods moving from the US, Japan, Western Europe and China to Russia, via countries such as Armenia, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan.

The Group of Seven (G7) democracies are well aware that this trade bolsters Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime and makes it easier for him to sustain his brutal war of aggression in Ukraine. But their governments are doing little to stop it for fear of upsetting domestic industrial interests.