Lithuania to ask EU for ban on Russian grain transit and oligarch sanctions

Lithuania's demands

On Thursday, 8 October, Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius said on Facebook that Lithuania will demand an EU ban on the transit of Russian food grain through EU territory. He also wants selected Russian oligarchs from the agricultural sector, who support the war, placed on the EU sanctions list. Bloomberg reported that Lithuania plans to push for these measures as Baltic states move to halt shipments through their ports. The demand targets transit, meaning grain that crosses EU territory, rather than grain sold within the bloc. In his post, Sinkevicius argued that the current arrangement cannot be accepted:

Russia is using European, including Baltic, ports and infrastructure to export its grain. This is an unacceptable situation.

Measures already in place

Lithuania is not waiting for the EU. Sinkevicius said his country is already introducing additional controls on its own, and he has instructed state institutions to tighten control over grain origin so that grain stolen from Ukraine or mixed with other grain is not transported through Lithuania. Law enforcement agencies are examining the links of grain exporters to assess whether they breach other sanctions in force. According to BNS, Lithuania has checked the origin of food grain transiting from Russia and Belarus since the start of September. Estonia has banned transit of Russian and Belarusian grain since 1 October, and Lithuania and Latvia back a common Baltic approach to controlling and limiting such transit. Sinkevicius framed the measures in terms of the Russian military:

We will not allow the Russian war machine to profit from using our infrastructure as a gateway to global markets.

Black Sea context

Digi24, citing Kyiv Independent, reports that Russia's ongoing blockade of the Black Sea sharply reduces Ukraine's revenue from food exports while leaving importing countries in the Middle East and North Africa in a precarious position. Kyiv accused Russia of attacking cargo ships off the Romanian and Bulgarian Black Sea coasts on 5 and 6 October, attacks that led to the deaths of civilians. Sinkevicius said Russia also exports its own grain through European ports, including Baltic ones. Wnp notes that in 2024 the EU imposed tariffs on Russian and Belarusian grain products, limiting their import into the bloc, but this did not eliminate grain transit through the EU to third countries.

EU position

David O'Sullivan, the EU's sanctions envoy, said in an interview with Kyiv Independent that the bloc has not imposed sanctions on agricultural products "because these do not really affect the war machine". He added that sanctions have already cut EU trade with Russia by 75%, and that a full decoupling is not necessarily the aim of the EU's sanctions policy. Sinkevicius said he had tolerated this situation until now on the grounds that EU sanctions do not apply to food products. He said Lithuania's stricter origin checks apply in the absence of a change in EU policy. The Lithuanian proposal therefore asks Brussels to go further than the current framework, which has limited imports but not transit.