Belarusian timber is still entering Lithuania and other EU countries in circumvention of the existing Western sanctions against Belarus, a new investigation has found.
According to a study carried out by the Belarusian Investigative Center in cooperation with the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, official timber exports from Kazakhstan to Poland alone increased fivefold last year, from 14 million to almost 68 million euros.
“We can see that more than 120 million euros worth of timber is entering the European Union through Poland. Some of it enters Lithuania. The timber enters Poland, is checked at the border, and then goes on to Lithuania via the territory of the European Union where there are no controls,” Stanislau Ivashkevich, head of the Belarusian Investigative Center, told LRT RADIO on Tuesday.
“Despite blocking the import of suspicious timber and by implementing the sanctions more effectively, Lithuania itself still receives such timber through the back door,” he added.
Timber exports from Belarus to the EU have dropped significantly after the sanctions were put in place. However, Belarusian timber is being shipped via Kazakhstan with forged documents, Ivashkevich said.
“A timber haulier from Belarus told us directly over the phone that the timber came from Belarus, not Kazakhstan,” he explained.
“Kazakhstan doesn’t have a lot of forest. It’s a big country but forests cover only 4 percent of its territory. Kazakhstan imports timber, and the 4–5 percent of forests they have are steppe trees, half of which are not very suitable for industrial woodworking,” Ivaskevich added.
The investigation comes a year after a similar investigation in 2022 found that Belarusian timber enters the EU via Kyrgyzstan.
“When we found out that Belarusian timber could be supplied to the EU as coming from Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania blocked imports of timber from Kyrgyzstan. That is where the good news ended. We continue to see strong growth of timber movement to the European Union from Kazakhstan,” the head of the Belarusian Investigative Center said.
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