This article was reprinted with permission after being published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Alyaksandr Lukashenko, Belarus ‘ pro-Moscow leader, bragged of growing European demand for his country’s rapeseed oil in June 2022, at a time when southern Ukraine had lately fallen under Russian military occupation.
Europe is asking,” Grant us wheat oil,” Lukashenko said to local authorities during a attend to the Mahilou territory in eastern Belarus.
By the end of that year, which was Russia’s first year of a bloody, full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Belarus was undoubtedly the best producer of soybean oil, selling 114, 000 lots of the product.
In 2021, who will be the best rapeseed oil supplier in the EU? Ukraine.
The reason for Kyiv’s imports to have dropped is obvious.
Ukraine has lost about 18 % of the entire arable land it held on the day of the war, according to the Leibniz Institute for Agrarian Development in Central and Eastern Europe ( IAMO). This is due to Soviet occupation, as well as mine and another military activities on its own part of the phone line.
What are the record-keeping soybean oil export statistics for Belarus, a Russian-allied nation whose country served as a staging area for the Kremlin’s invasion in February 2022?
According to Eurostat information, EU member states purchased 90, 400 tons of soybean oil from Belarus for 67.7 million dollars ($ 71 million )— roughly four days more than the levels exported throughout 2021.
One of Belarus’s largest rape chips is sourcing fresh supplies from Russian-occupied Ukraine while widely supplying the finished product to the EU, according to an investigation by Schemes, the analytical component of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service.
The same business continued to supply rapeseed oil to Lithuania, the just EU nation so far to impose a moratorium on Belarusian food exports via Latvia and Poland, according to the research.
The separate Ukrainian media shop 15min was the subject of the Schemes research. lieutenant, the secret TV network TV3 in Latvia, the Belarusian Investigative Center, and the Belarusian Railway Workers of Belarus, an organization that is run by exile. Based on information obtained by the advocate hacker organizations KibOrg and Cyber Partisans, it was based on the information.
Kherson’s Destroy
If the southwestern Kherson location of Ukraine is frequently referred to as the “breadbasket of Ukraine,” as opposed to the “breadbasket of Europe” in some circles.
Farmers in Kherson reported plans to develop agrotourism in the area in 2021, and farmers in the area recorded a record harvest of early-season vegetables during the independence era.
All of that was altered by Russia’s massive conquest.
In the first week of the bloody war, the Russian military seized some districts in the Kherson region, and improper agricultural product exports immediately broke out under the new Russian-controlled management.
Schemes were discovered in August 2024 as a result of a Russian data leak that revealed that large amounts of grain being transported to Belarus.
According to the leaked records, nearly 5, 000 tons of rapeseed were taken there in 2023 by Russian businesses, including Agrotreyd and Torgtreyd, which are connected to the Isayev family, which is close to the late Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov’s father.
Other deliveries were made by Aleksei Lukyanchenko, a businessman from the Russian city of Barnaul, and a Moscow-based business called Veles-Agro.
According to reports from reporters, rapeseed was delivered to at least five businesses in Belarus from the Kherson region, which is owned by Russia.
One of those businesses, Agroprodukt, is a major producer and exporter of rapeseed oil.
Lukashenko has tried the product from that company before before in front of state television cameras several times.
And it is the same rapeseed oil that has been extensively exported to EU nations.
preventing Lithuania’s Ban from being implemented
Belarusian food exports were not targeted by Ukraine’s European allies despite Western sanctions against Belarus over its role in abetting Moscow’s invasion.
However, in order to “weaken the economies of states that pose a threat to Lithuania’s national security,” Lithuania imposed its own, ban, and ban on a wide range of Russian and Belarusian agricultural products in June 2024.
Because Lithuania and Latvia have been the main importers of Belarusian rapeseed oil into the EU, the ban was significant.
Between 2024 and 2024, these two nations each received 50 000 tons of rapeseed oil from Agroprodukt.
The Community of Railway Workers of Belarus, an opposition group formed during massive anti-government protests in 2020 and receiving leaked information from the state-owned Belarusian Railway, kept track of those deliveries.
Agroprodukt was first notified in August of a scheme that claimed to have purchased raw materials from Ukrainian territories that were occupied by Russia.
For his part, Agroprodukt director and co-founder Aleh Tsiasliuk,  , claimed in August 2023 that his company was short of raw materials.
” We need more than 300,000 tons of rapeseed annually, and Belarus produces about 900,000 tons,” the president said. Everyone needs one of the many processors that there are. So roughly 30 % of the required amount must be purchased from neighbors. Rapeseed was previously imported from Russia and Ukraine, according to Tsiasliuk, who cited Russia as the only source of supply.
The company receiving deliveries whose origin is listed as the” Kherson region” in the” Russian Federation,” according to the agroprodukt shipping records that Schemes journalists saw.
In other words, Kherson’s region is being occupied by Russia.
The logistics company K. I. F. in Latvia is one of the four companies importing rapeseed oil from Agroprodukt.
According to official company reports, K. I. F’s turnover has increased from over 1 million euros annually to 2.3 million euros as of 2023, from around 1 million to around 1 million euros in the year prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion.
A K. I. F. representative told reporters that they “have no information that the imported product from Belarus was produced from raw materials originating in the occupied territories” when the Latvian TV channel TV3 visited the company’s office in Riga in January.
The representative made the commitment to check their suppliers.
However, it appears that Belarusian food products were not prevented by Lithuania’s ban.
In a 15 minute interview. According to lt, a manager for the Lithuanian logistics company TLSC, goods could still be imported via Poland or Latvia, thereby avoiding the embargo.
The same workaround was suggested by another Lithuanian forwarding firm, Baltijos Pervezimai, who recommended 15 minutes. The reporter from LRT, who was posing as a potential client.
The representative of Baltijos Pervezimai acknowledged that, despite the ban, it was working with Belarus ‘ Agroprodukt.
Friendship in high places
Agroprodukt is more than just a producer of rapeseed oil.
The Belarusian company Tranzit-Avto 2003, which Ukraine imposed sanctions on in January 2023, holds 70 % of the company’s equity.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, quoted as saying that the punishments were directed at “legal entities and individuals who are employed by the aggressor state to transport military equipment and soldiers by rail.”
What circumstances may have prevented the Tranzit-Avto 2003 from transporting Russian soldiers or military equipment?
In time for publication, the Ukrainian Security Service did not respond to a request for more information.
The connection between Agroprodukt and its parent company and the Lukashenko regime is more obvious.
In a 2021 interview, Tsiasliuk of Agroprodukt bragged that” the]Minsk ] authorities know me, and I can approach them [and ] convey people’s requests, knowing they will be taken into account.”
Alyaksey Shvedov, the sole listed owner of Tranzit-Avto 2003, is even more close to the center of power.
According to information obtained by the Belarusian hacktivist group Cyber Partisans, Shvedov has previously traveled to Ukraine on more than one occasion while driving the same vehicle as Alyaksandr Zaitsau, a Belarusian president’s administrative affairs officer.
Despite all of this, neither sanctions against Agroprodukt have been put in place against Europe or Ukraine.
The company is able to purchase rapeseed from European and Ukrainian farmers while selling oil in the EU.
However, that might change.
We can speak of the actions of a foreign legal entity that pose real or potential threats to Ukraine’s national interests and territorial integrity, which may serve as justification for imposing Ukrainian sanctions, said Vladyslav Vlasiuk, Zelenskyy’s sanctions policy commissioner after reviewing the findings of the joint media investigation.
Reporters were able to reach Agroprodukt director Aleh Tsiasliuk, but he declined to comment on any of the company’s activities.
