Timber under a foreign flag: How Central Asia became a hub for evading sanctions on Belarusian wood
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, on 2 March 2022 the European Union imposed a complete ban on the export of Belarusian timber, while the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) fully suspended all trade certificates for materials of Belarusian and Russian origin. This deprived Belarusian companies of the right to legally…
Why Russia’s shadow LNG fleet threatens the effectiveness of the European embargo
While European institutions prepare for the final embargo on Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG), scheduled for 1 January 2027, Moscow is rolling out an unprecedented special operation at sea in terms of its technical and legal complexity. Having failed to halt sanctions pressure through conventional diplomatic means, the Kremlin, together…
Freedom of speech as a loophole for Kremlin propaganda in the EU
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the European Union’s subsequent ban on state-controlled Russian media outlets such as RT and Sputnik, the Kremlin retained alternative channels for spreading its ideological and propagandistic narratives. One of the most effective has been niche book publishing across EU countries. Works…
Russia turns the Ceuta crisis into a weapon against European unity
The mass breakthrough of migrants from Morocco into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta has become not only a humanitarian and border crisis, but also an information pretext for Russian propaganda, which has begun using it to spread panic and destabilize Europe. Photographs of streets overflowing with migrants, people in the…
From sanctions to Europe’s shadow fuel market
The energy “restructuring” of the European Union that began in 2022 was intended to deprive Moscow of revenue from raw material exports and to secure the European market. However, the rejection of direct supplies and the hasty redesign of logistics routes produced an unexpected side effect: while regulators and customs…