Russian Mills Continue Steel Export to Western World
Strategic Research Institute
Published on :
9 Feb, 2023, 5:56 am
British INews has reported that millions of tonnes of Russian steel has been imported into the UK, the European Union and the US since the war in Ukraine started due to loophole in global sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine almost a year ago permitted nations to continue to pay Russian producers billions of dollars for a wide variety of metal products as long as they were ordered before mid-March 2022. As a result, figures for Russians metals imports for the nine months following the outbreak of the war remained at around half of the monthly imports before the invasion.
The report citing data from industry source The Metal Expert as saying that “Europe and the US imported just under 4 million tonnes of Russian metal products from the beginning of March to the end of November 2022. While this represents a significant fall on the 7 million tonnes imported during the same period in 2021, it means that the Russian metal industry was still exporting in the nine months after the war started, 57% of the level it did before.”
While the UK and US reduced their metals imports from Russia by more than 80% in the nine months after the war began, Belgium reduced its dependence by just 37%. Belgium was the biggest European importer of Russian metals before the Ukraine conflict began and continued to be so in the nine months after, buying almost half of all the metal sold in Europe and the US.
Belgium is home to a plant owned by Novolipetsk Steel. Located in La Louvière near Brussels, the NMLK plant focuses on the production of hot- and cold-rolled coils that are used in automotive and construction industries. The plant has a production capacity of almost 3 million tonnes of steel that finds its way into the automotive sector, construction and is used in the production of pressured vessels used to hold gas, oils and fuels.
A leading European metals trader told “None of these imports are illegal because the EU sanctions permitted businesses to order Russian source metals until mid-March last year. Indeed, many metals from Russia continue to be exempt from sanctions across EU, the UK and US. The problem with it is that while the West arms Ukraine in its fight to defeat the Russian invaders, it is also pumping billions of dollars into the Russian economy.”
The report has echoed views of Ukrainian Metinvest Group’ CEO Mr Yuriy Ryzhenkov in an interview with The Telegraph. He has told “Some sanctions, in my opinion, do not work properly, for example, sanctions on the import of steel semi-finished products to Europe. There is not even a loophole, but a quota for Russians for the next two years for the supply of semi-finished products, for example, from steel, without any restrictions. And this quota is approximately equal to the average volume of supplies of Russian semi-finished products to the EU over the past five years.”