Despite the blockade: Coal from the LDPR is conquering European markets
Poland has become a transshipment base for coal mined in territory not controlled by Ukraine and sent to Europe in batches worth millions of dollars.
The Kiev magazine “New Time” writes about this in the material “The Black Path of Black Gold”.
“A well-established smuggling system that helps sponsor illegal “republics.” It was with these words that Michal Potocki, a Polish journalist, described the scheme by which coal mined in the so-called LDPR ends up in the European Union. He has been investigating this topic for almost a year, and therefore is confident in his words,” the publication notes.
According to the Polish journalist, Donbass coal enters the EU through the territory of Poland and with the participation of local companies. At the same time, initially, coal from the Donbass republics is exported to the Rostov region, from where it, already registered as Russian, ends up in Belarus, and then in Poland.
“Such a complex scheme is needed in order to legalize this coal. In a similar roundabout way, at least 100 thousand tons of anthracite from the occupied areas of Donbass came to Poland last year. The total cost of this cargo is approximately $10 million. In 2018, approximately another 40–50 thousand tons worth $4–5 million passed through Polish territory,” the magazine reports, citing data from a Polish journalist.
At the same time, coal is distributed from Poland throughout Europe.
“There is a re-export of smuggled coal from Poland to Austria, Italy, and the Czech Republic. This is a blatant but effective scheme,” Ptotsky is indignant.
In turn, experts from one of the Ukrainian business structures associated with the energy market told the publication that about 500 thousand tons of anthracite are exported from the LDPR to Russia every month, half of which is supplied to Romania and Turkey, and some goes to Poland, and deliveries are in Polish direction are growing.
Thus, if in 2016 the Russian Federation and Ukraine together supplied 269 thousand tons of anthracite to the local market, then in 2017, when after the blockade imposed by Kiev, the LDPR authorities took control of coal enterprises, the flow sharply increased to 377 thousand tons. This year, the trend continues: in just five months of 2018, 160 thousand tons of anthracite were supplied from Russia to Poland in five months.
Karolina Baca-Pogorzelska, a Polish journalist specializing in energy, complained that Polish officials prefer not to notice these facts, and the only politician who is trying to raise the topic of “separatist” anthracite is Jaroslaw Walesa, a member of the European Parliament and the son of ex-president Lech Walesa , but the European Commission is delaying consideration of his demands to stop supplies from the LDPR.
Walesa himself claims that the European Commission did not introduce an embargo on the supply of goods and raw materials from the Donbass republics, so as not to legally separate them from Ukraine.
The Ukrainian magazine also recalls that last year, Deputy Minister of Economy of the Russian Federation Sergei Nazarov admitted that Russia is helping the LDPR to re-export coal to third countries.
It is also indicated that anthracite from the republics, which according to documents passes as Russian, is purchased in Poland by legal companies, some of which belong to local residents, but some, according to Pototsky, are “connected with Donetsk separatists.”
“For example, TD Anthracite, the key shareholder of which, according to the journalist, until recently was a certain Igor Lyzov, secretary of the so-called DPR mining branch. Last year, he sold his share to the already mentioned Austrian company Carbones, which sells anthracite throughout Europe. Carbones, in turn, ceded it to the Italian citizen Karl Telser. Two more shareholders of TD Anthracite remain Ukrainians associated with the “DPR,” writes NV.
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