Trading con il nemico: aziende polacche legate alla rete di approvvigionamento militare russo

Polish officials are really that incompetent. If that was the case of an elderly lady selling a radish on a sidewalk or someone not printing out the legal receipt, they’d let all hell loose upon their faces. But when it comes to big money and convoluted schemes… Strong against weak, weak against strong. Disgusting, all of them.

* **Right under the noses of Polish officials, a network of companies is importing sanctioned goods into Russia. At its center is a firm based in Gdynia, a city on Poland’s Baltic coast.**
* **The key figure in the scheme is a politician from Putin’s United Russia party, who is also involved in training future conscripts for the Russian army in Kaliningrad.**
* **His company works with the state-owned Russian nuclear giant Rosatom, while his Polish partners openly boast about ties to a strategic Polish fuel company.**
* **Polish authorities appear unable—or unwilling—to address even this blatant case of sanctions violations.**

Every day, Russia rains hundreds of deadly drones on Ukraine. Civilians, including children, are killed in the attacks. In response, the European Union imposes further sanctions on the Kremlin. In theory, those who continue to trade with Russia despite the bloody war should lose out and close their businesses. In practice, however, the most brazen are thriving in the new reality, officially serving customers in the EU while quietly fueling the Russian economy.

Together with experts from [Trap Aggressor](https://trap.org.ua/en/), a project run by the Ukrainian analytical center StateWatch, we have tracked down one such company. Despite the sanctions and bans, it finds loopholes to supply key products—from microelectronics to specialized industrial components—to Russia. This is possible thanks to a network of intermediaries from Turkey, Kazakhstan, and Poland. To hide what it really does, the company has created a network of companies and websites that allow it to circumvent restrictions.

We have examined this arrangement. There are many indications that neither the Polish services nor the Polish administration have done a similar investigation.

# Putinist in Stawiguda

This story begins fifteen years ago in Kaliningrad. In 2010, Russian businessman Anton Osipenko founded OOO Consteel (“OOO” being “Ltd” in Russian). The company was involved in a wide range of industries, from trade and construction to logistics. He did not set it up alone: his partner was a Pole, Sebastian Borkowski. In that same year, a new Polish-Russian border crossing was opened in Grzechotki. Over the next 15 years, the Russian and Polish business grew into an international group of companies linked to the same people.

Who is Anton Osipenko? He is a well-known figure in Kaliningrad Oblast. In 2004, he was convicted of preparing and attempting to commit crime and theft, and was a former councilor in Mamonovo, a small town five kilometers from the Polish border. Later, beginning in 2016, he represented Putin’s United Russia party for several years in the local government.

In 2017, Councilor Osipenko arrived in Poland as an official representative of the Russian authorities. In Stawiguda, in the province of Warmian-Masurian, he signed a letter of intent on cooperation (Poles and Russians wanted to obtain €2 million from EU funds, among other things, for the renovation of cultural centers on both sides of the border). Documents bearing the Mamonovo coat of arms—crossed axes against a rising sun—landed on the desks of Polish officials.

In a 2017 interview with local television, Anton Osipenko, a burly man with a crew cut and a Russian flag on his lapel, speaks fluent Polish. With a stony face, he makes plans for a cultural festival.