US Sanctions Four Kyrgyz Firms Against Russia

Just hours after Kyrgyzstan’s head of national security declared on Thursday that no company in his country has violated U.S. sanctions against Russia, the U.S. Treasury announced sanctions against four Kyrgyz firms for doing exactly that.

“Neither the Kyrgyz state itself, nor any state structures and companies are involved in the violation of the regime of compliance with the sanctions restrictions imposed by the United States and Western countries in relation to Russia,” said Kamchybek Tashiev, the deputy head of the Cabinet of Ministers and the head of the State Committee for National Security in the morning.

“Entities based in the Kyrgyz Republic have been frequent exporters of controlled electronics components and other technology to Russia since Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine,” stated the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in a press release in the afternoon. “Some of these shipments have subsequently supplied sensitive dual-use goods to entities in Russia’s defense sector.”There were warning signs long before sanctions were finally introduced. Several Western diplomats visited the country to discuss concerns over its trade with Russia and the possibility of sanction evasions.

“Kyrgyzstan, while small relative to other countries, is a clear example of every factor at play at once to create an unacceptably [sanctions] evasion-friendly environment,” an anonymous senior U.S. official told The Washington Post on Tuesday.

OCCRP has discovered that Kyrgyz authorities recently changed the way they publish trade statistics, effectively concealing the banned trade with Russia from the public.