Ukraine has large reserves of titanium ores. According to the estimates of the state-owned United Mining and Chemical Company, 20% of all world reserves of this raw material are concentrated in Ukraine. At the same time, Ukraine practically does not produce metal titanium and products from it. The concentrate is exported, from which finished products are already being produced in other countries.
The concentrate itself can be of several types – rutile, ilmenite, zircon, disthene-silemanite, staurolite. An important detail – the State Export Control Service (SSEC), for unknown reasons, controls only the export of ilmenite concentrate, for the export of which enterprises must obtain an appropriate permit (the so-called “ticket”). This type of raw material is recognized as a dual-use product (that is, it can be used in the military sphere). For some reason, other concentrates are exported without control.
The export of titanium concentrates continues during the war. From July last year to April 2023, the state-owned United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC) exported 82.2 thousand tons of ores containing titanium. According to sources in the titanium industry, a significant portion of these products ended up in the Russian Federation.
In particular, batches of titanium concentrate were sold to intermediary companies from Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia, which have Russian citizens as founders and work with Russia.
For example, in July, August and September 2022, UMCC supplied thousands of tons of concentrate to the Hungarian company Sic Luceat Lux KFT, founded by Crimean natives Alexander and Svetlana Muradyan (most likely just front men).
Titanium concentrate was supplied by the Hungarian Sic Luceat Lux KFT, whose founders are the natives of the Crimea (photo by RBC-Ukraine)
In open sources notedthat the main counterparties of this company and consignees in 2021-2022 were Redmetconcentrate LLC (Moscow), Nerudnaya Company LLC (Belgorod), Minko Rus LLC (Belgorod) and other Russian companies.
Thus, the specified company is an obvious Russian gasket, and the state-owned company OGCC cannot be unaware of this.
Another example is the Polish company BioProfTech Sp.zoo, registered in Warsaw. Its founder is Ruslan Hakobyan, registered in the occupied Khartsyzsk, Donetsk region. Hakobyan has Russian citizenship. This company received shipments of ilmenite from Ukraine in the summer and autumn of 2022.
Polish BioProfTech Sp.zoo with a founder from occupied Khartsyzsk received batches of ilmenite (photo by RBC-Ukraine)
The situation is even more egregious with another enterprise – Zaporozhye Titanium and Magnesium Combine (LLC ZTMK), which previously belonged to the oligarch Dmitry Firtash, and in 2021 was returned to state ownership by a court decision (the decision is still in the process of execution). ZTMK is the only producer of spongy titanium in Ukraine. Unlike OGCC, it exported not just raw materials, but actually finished products – titanium sponge, titanium ingots, titanium tetrachloride, titanium slag. In 2022, the plant almost did not work, but sold off the products that were in its warehouses. In total, about 2 thousand tons of titanium products were sold for a total of UAH 276.6 million.
The buyers, among others, were companies from Montenegro, Austria, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, connected with Russia and having Russian founders.
In particular, the buyer of tetrachloride was the company Nadezda Invest Dooregistered in the city of Budva (Montenegro), co-founded by Sergey Orekhov and Vladislav Nechiporenko.
Czech Nadezda Invest Doo bought Ukrainian titanium tetrachloride (photo by RBC-Ukraine)
Sponge titanium from ZTMK was bought by the Austrian company LL-Resourses GmbH, whose director is Anatoly Zaitsev, a citizen of the Russian Federation from St. Petersburg. He permanently resides in Austria and is a confidant of the oligarch Dmitry Firtash, who previously owned ZTMK.
And titanium slag in August 2022 was bought by Cytleon Sro, a Czech company co-founded by Russian citizen Leonid Tsitlenok, registered in Moscow.
European companies with Russian founders purchased Ukrainian titanium raw materials (photo by RBC-Ukraine)
You can list for a long time so as not to overload the reader with numbers and names of gasket companies, we will limit ourselves to the above examples. They are enough to assert that state-owned enterprises either knowingly or negligently sell titanium products to sealing companies that deliver them further to Russia. Where the end consumer of these products is most likely military plants. In particular, the world’s largest producer of titanium and titanium products – VSMPO-AVISMA Corporation, which has historically needed Ukrainian raw materials and continues to need them today. VSMPO-Avisma products are widely used by military plants. In particular, for the production of aircraft, helicopters, cruise missiles and other products.
Of course, the situation requires intervention at the highest level, a thorough investigation and control over the export of titanium raw materials. It is completely incomprehensible why the State Export Control Service does not currently stop titanium exports to gasket companies working with Russia. It is also difficult to explain why an export permit has been established only for concentrations of ilmenite, while other types of products are allowed to be exported without control.
Without a doubt, during the wartime, the export of titanium raw materials to Russia should be excluded, so the state needs to draw up a list of reliable international companies that would be allowed to sell raw materials, and prohibit the sale of raw materials to fly-by-night firms and various intermediaries, regardless of which countries they are registered.
Otherwise, Ukraine will continue to strengthen its own enemy, which openly proclaims the destruction of Ukrainian statehood as its goal.
2023-08-07 09:20:00
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