Latvia And Lithuania May Close Their Ports To Russian Grain

Some of this grain was stolen from Ukraine.

Latvia and Lithuania are considering a ban on Russian grain shipments through their ports. This was reported on Friday, September 4, by Reuters, citing officials from both countries. According to the agency, Russia has redirected its grain exports to Baltic ports due to Ukrainian drone attacks in the Black and Azov Seas.

On September 8, the Latvian government will hold a meeting to discuss a complete ban on Russian grain exports, a spokesperson for the Latvian prime minister told Reuters. Lithuania has not explicitly announced plans to impose a ban, but the country’s authorities have emphasized that the use of its ports for the export of Russian grain is unacceptable.

“The export of Russian grain using Lithuanian infrastructure contradicts our values,” Reuters quotes Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius as saying. The official added, however, that the transit of grain between mainland Russia and its Kaliningrad exclave through Lithuanian territory will continue.

Officials in Riga and Vilnius suspect that some of the grain exported by Russia was taken from Ukrainian territories occupied by the Russian Federation. “Ukrainian authorities have information about grain illegally removed from Ukraine, which Russia plans to export in large volumes through the Baltic states in the near future,” said Latvian Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs. He instructed Latvian authorities, in cooperation with Kyiv, to “establish a mechanism to prevent the transit of grain illegally obtained in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.”

For its part, the Lithuanian State Veterinary Control Service told the BNS news agency that on September 3, it took samples of grain declared as Russian at the port of Klaipėda and sent them to a laboratory in France. “The goal is to verify whether the grain labeled as Russian is actually Ukrainian: it could have been stolen,” explained a representative of the agency.

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