Last year and the year before, Western countries, including Lithuania, exported to Russia technologies used by the Russians in their artillery, LRT RADIO reports.
According to Denys Hutyk, director of the Economic Security Council of Ukraine, who headed the joint Ukrainian-British investigation team, Lithuanian companies accounted for about 2.5 percent of these exports.
The study shows that Lithuanian businesses continue to sell parts to Russia, Hutyk said.
“Some Lithuanian companies, Lithuanian suppliers are still involved in direct exports to Russia. This allows Russia to get the parts it needs more quickly and facilitates the circumvention of sanctions,” he told LRT RADIO.
Lithuania ranks behind Germany and Italy in terms of exported parts among EU countries in this study.
“We see a problem with the functioning of the sanctions,” Hutyk said.
He noted that exports have been declining since 2023, but currently, parts are entering Russia via other countries.
“Until 2022, we saw mainly direct exports to Russia from Western countries, but since the start of the war, direct imports have decreased. The biggest direct exporters of machinery and technology to Russia are now China, Taiwan, and South Korea,” the researcher said.
Karolis Žemaitis, former deputy economy and innovation minister, stressed the need to distinguish between goods produced in Lithuania and those re-exported through the country.
According to him, Lithuanian companies export very little high technology to Russia, but a lot of it is transported through the country due to its strong logistics sector and favourable geographical location.
“Lithuanian manufacturers produce microscopically few products that could be of interest to Russia compared to the whole world, but our logistics sector certainly has enough capacity to participate in these processes,” Žemaitis told LRT RADIO.
“There have certainly been indications of this,” he added.
The investigation reveals that high-tech equipment parts made in Europe may have been exported to Russia via Taiwan.
“Taiwan is one of the largest exporters of high-tech parts to Russia. In 2023 and the first quarter of 2024, Taiwan had the highest number of companies after China that directly exported parts to Russia,” Hutyk said.
“If Lithuanian companies have increased their exports to Taiwan, there is a high risk that these goods have been directed to Russia,” he noted.
Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas said on Thursday that he had no information that Lithuanian goods could be used by the Russian military industry.
The government plans to ease restrictions on the export of dual-use goods by air to third countries, introduced in December by the former cabinet to prevent them from reaching Russia.
Economy and Innovations Minister Lukas Savickas said Lithuania’s high-technology exports suffer from these restrictions.
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