Lithuanian MPs, who have been working for closer cooperation with Taiwan, have been upset by recent reports about the island supplying Russia’s military industry with machine tools despite sanctions.
At the end of January, The Insider, an independent Russian website, announced in a joint journalistic investigation with the Taiwanese publication The Reporter that Taiwan had become an important supplier of metalworking machines to Russia’s military industry over the past year.
Conservative MP Matas Maldeikis, who chairs the parliamentary relations with Taiwan group and recently led a Lithuanian delegation to the island, agrees it is a problem.
“I have read the investigation. It is very unfortunate that it appeared after we returned from Taiwan. We would certainly have had a discussion about it. Sure, we are friends, but we do have a problem here: I want to look you in the eye and tell you what you can do more,” Maldeikis told LNK TV news on Saturday.
He led a delegation of 11 members of the Lithuanian parliament, Seimas, that met with the Taiwanese authorities in Taipei from January 20–27.
Maldekis noted, however, that Taiwan was one of the first countries to impose sanctions on Russia following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
“As I understood from the investigation and the situation itself, this is a business-to-business issue,” said Maldekis.
According to The Insider investigation, despite banning exports of machine tools to Russia back in January 2023, Taiwan continues to sell the equipment which travels by ship via third countries, mainly China and Turkey.
Based on Russian customs data on the international trade data platform NBD, The Insider reports that in March–September 2023, Moscow imported 193 pieces of machine tools from Taiwan for almost 29 million US dollars.
Meanwhile, ties between Lithuania and Taiwan have been deepening over the past few years. In autumn 2021, a Taiwanese representative office was opened in Vilnius, and in November 2022, Lithuania opened a trade representative office in Taipei.
Lithuanian Parliament Speaker Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, who joined a business delegation to Taiwan last October, said Ukraine’s supporters should work to close loopholes in the sanction regime against Russia.
“I have seen the report and, of course, how can one judge it? Bad. Russia is looking for ways to circumvent sanctions, this is a known fact. [...] Naturally, Russia is trying to circumvent the sanctions with the help of Belarus or other third countries,” Čmilytė-Nielsen told BNS on Sunday.
“If these facts are confirmed, naturally I will take a bad view, and it is also obvious that maintaining sanctions and closing loopholes is a continuous process,” she added.
Liberal MP Vytautas Mitalas, a member of the parliamentary group on parliamentary relations with Taiwan, says it is a matter of honour for Taipei to stop working with Russian industry.
“If there are some nasty people who are exporting and selling goods that can be used to grow the Russian military industry, it seems to me that it is a matter of Taiwan’s honour to resolve these issues and to stop them,” Mitalas told LNK news.
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