“Important stories”: during a year and a half of war, the Russian company imported aircraft parts worth 650 million rubles. Most of them are made in Ukraine – Meduza

From January 2022 to July 2023, the Russian company Avia FED Service imported at least 650 million rubles worth of spare parts for airplanes and helicopters into the country, of which 370 million were products of Ukrainian companies, Important Stories found out.

According to customs documents, the Russian company imported almost 120 million rubles worth of parts for An-124 aircraft produced by the Kharkov FED machine-building plant, spare parts for Ka-32 helicopters produced by the Kiev Radar plant worth more than 67 million rubles. The company also purchased approximately 170 million worth of products from a number of other Ukrainian companies, including parts for the repair of An-24 and An-12 engines produced by Motor Sich.

In addition, aviation spare parts from Avia FED Service were supplied to companies from France, the USA and the UK. The main buyers of the Russian company, according to government procurement data, were the Russian Ministry of Defense, enterprises of the Rostec state corporation and the presidential special flight squad “Russia”.

As Important Stories note, in 2018, Avia FED Service came under sanctions from Ukraine, so deliveries to Russia were carried out through the Linker company from the UAE. The last delivery to a Russian company from Linker was made in January 2023. After this, supplies were carried out through the Bakaitorg1 company from Kyrgyzstan, which was registered in April 2023. Since then, this company has managed to sell to Avia FED Service the products of the Kharkov FED Machine-Building Plant for almost 40 million rubles.

At the same time, the director of Avia FED Service, Alexander Reshetnik, in a commentary to Important Stories, stated that the products of Ukrainian enterprises, which the Russian company received in 2022–2023, were allegedly purchased in 2020–2021, and since then have simply “been lying behind border.” When asked how this is possible in the case of deliveries through the recently registered Bakaitorg1, the publication’s interlocutor did not answer.

At the same time, Linker owner Alexey Palchik told Important Stories that the company “has never supplied and does not supply anything” from Ukraine to Russia.

After the outbreak of a full-scale war in Ukraine, Western countries imposed numerous sanctions against Russia, including against the aviation industry. Because of this, Russia has to purchase the necessary components with the help of intermediary companies.

“Important Stories” found that from March 2022 to March 2023, Russia purchased spare parts for Airbus and Boeing aircraft worth 18 billion rubles. The bulk of supplies came from the UAE (9 billion), China (5 billion) and Turkey (2 billion). Often the owners of the supplying companies were Russians.

Read more about how Russia manages to circumvent sanctions