The Baltic border guard services and officers are aware that sanctioned goods are crossing into Russia and Belarus, but there is little they can do about it, reports the prominent Brussels-based newspaper Politico.
Although Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are among the most vocal hawks when it comes to sanctioning Russia, they struggle to control the 1,600-kilometre border they share with Russia and Belarus.
“As a result, the Baltic border crossings have become a prime destination for those seeking to evade sanctions on goods that could have both civilian and military uses, as well as luxury items like cars, according to government officials, customs officers and experts,” Politico writes.
Border guards inspect and scan hundreds of trucks every day, but say they lack the capacity to cope with the huge flow, which can equally include drugs and sanctioned goods.
“Politicians do not want to spend money on customs to implement sanctions,” Darius Binkys, a Lithuanian customs official, told Politico. “We are all very tired. We all work overtime.”
His colleague Rolandas Jurgaitis told the publication that they do not have access to paid platforms where customs officers could check a company’s real owners and whether they are sanctioned.
While checking trucks has been a routine procedure, customs officers now need to check cargo against long lists of sanctioned goods and complex legislation. Most of these goods are not even produced locally – according to the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, only 6 percent of what gets shipped out of the country to Belarus or Russia is made in Lithuania, the rest comes from across Europe.
Around 6,000 customs codes are included in the lists of sectoral sanctions against Russia and Belarus, according to Raimonds Zukuls, director of the Latvian National Customs Council.
To complicate matters further, not all goods crossing the Baltic-Russian border are actually heading to Russia – at least according to official declarations. Moreover, different sanctions apply to Belarus, so some goods that cannot be exported to Russia can still go to Minsk.
Some of the goods purportedly only transit Russia, while their declared destinations are Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan. In some instances, these goods are unloaded as soon as they reach Russia or reach their destination and then get re-exported, Politico reports.
“How do goods reach Central Asian countries – the South Caucasus and some other parts of the world, like China? It’s not possible without crossing Russia and Belarus,” it quotes Lithuanian Deputy Foreign Minister Jolita Neliupšienė.
Customs officials therefore try to compare how many goods are declared as destined for, say, Kazakhstan against how many actually reach the country.
According to European Commission data quoted by Politico, the EU recorded exports of critical products such as fuel, machinery and car parts to Kazakhstan worth 1.87 billion euros in 2022. Kazakhstan, meanwhile, declared that it had received only 1.1 billion worth of goods, so goods worth 750 simply disappeared.
Sometimes breaking the rules is obvious, said an unidentified Lithuanian customs official. One lorry declared that it would make a 3,500km journey to Kazakhstan, but two days after crossing into Belarus it turned up at the Latvian border. “That’s physically impossible,” the official stressed.
Latvian and Lithuanian officials said they regularly find documents hidden in the trucks which indicate that the goods will end up in Russia.
The Baltic countries signed a declaration on January 26 pledging to unify customs controls.
Last summer, Lithuania tightened the law to require additional documents to cross the border with Belarus. It also closed two of its six checkpoints, with two more marked for closure in March.
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