A supply chain to Russia for sanctioned chemicals, including compounds that could be used to make chemical weapons and nerve-agent poisons, has been uncovered by Spanish authorities.
EU exports of such chemicals to Russia would be certain to raise alarm bells given the links of Russian security services to nerve-agent attacks on Kremlin enemies, including the late opposition leader Aleksei Navalny.
Spanish authorities did not release details about the specific chemicals in the 13 tons they seized in the fall of 2024, or the types of chemical weapons they could help produce. But an RFE/RL investigation found that the haul included a compound that plays a key role in Russia’s war machine.
RFE/RL’s Russian Service analyzed a video of the bust released by Spanish police and found that the listed contents of barrels they seized has wide application in Russia’s military industry, including the production of drones, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and batteries for nuclear submarines.
The compound in question is a strong chemical solvent called N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone, whose abbreviation, NMP, is visible on the labels on some barrels shown in the Spanish police video.
Widely used in the petroleum and pharmaceutical industries, NMP was included in the EU list of goods prohibited for sale to Russia in April 2022, six weeks after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine.
Global consumption of NMP has also grown due to its use in the manufacture of lithium-ion batteries and microcircuits.
The labels on the barrels shown in the Spanish police video also indicate the seized NMP was produced by a Chinese chemicals company, and the container number indicates the shipment arrived in Barcelona three months after departing the Chinese port of Qingdao in June, an analysis of shipping records by RFE/RL’s Russian Service found.
Since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Chinese-produced NMP has been purchased by a subsidiary of sanctioned Russian state-owned conglomerate Rostec that is a supplier to a unit of Russia’s Kurchatov Institute, a sanctioned nuclear-weapons developer, involved in drone production.
It is unclear whether the cargo shown in the video is the only shipment that Spanish police and customs officers detained during their two-year investigation into illicit trafficking of dual-use goods.
Spanish authorities have not released the names of the individuals or companies suspected in the case, and Spanish police did not respond to RFE/RL’s inquiry about what substance or substances were seized in the October raid in the port of Barcelona.
A ‘Critical’ Chemical
Russia does not produce its own NMP, leaving it reliant on imports of a compound included in the country’s list of critical products for its chemicals sector.
Prior to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, there were cases of Russia’s military-industrial complex purchasing Western-produced NMP. For example, Russian procurement records show that the sanctioned Russian company Uralelement in 2018 purchased 1.5 tons of German-made NMP from another Russian firm, Uraltekhimport.
Uralelement, which describes itself as “a strategic enterprise of the military-industrial complex,” is part of the Russian state-owned defense conglomerate Tactical Missiles Corporation, which was also hit with Western sanctions in 2022.
In July 2021, Deputy Defense Minister Aleksei Krivoruchko visited the Uralelement plant. A message on the company’s website states that Krivoruchko “signed important decisions related to the production of special-purpose batteries by Uralelement for Military Unit 40056.”
Open-source records show that military unit 40056 is part of what is now the Main Directorate of Deep-Sea Research (GUGI). It was under the auspices of the GUGI that a secretive surveillance submarine known informally as the Losharik suffered a catastrophic accident in 2019 while conducting tests in the Barents Sea. A short circuit in the battery compartment was later blamed for the accident.
Another buyer of NMP before Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine was the Arzamas Research and Production Enterprise Temp-Avia, also part of the Tactical Missiles Corporation, which produces electronics for Russian military aircraft and drone missile systems, government procurement data shows.
In the spring of 2023, Temp Avia’s director said that “the workload of production in connection with” Russia’s war on Ukraine “has increased multiple times.”
Still another buyer of NMP was the Central Design and Technology Bureau of Polymer Materials with Pilot Production, which supplied materials to the Votkinsk Plant, a manufacturer of Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Around half of the 29 publicly available government purchases of NMP prior to 2022 that RFE/RL’s Russian Service reviewed are from state-owned companies linked to the military-industrial complex.
Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Chinese-made NMP has also been purchased by the Petrov Institute of Plastics, a Rostec subsidiary. Corporate records show that one of the institute’s key customers is VIAM, the aviation-materials unit of the Kurchatov Institute, a nuclear-weapons developer headed by close Putin associate Mikhail Kovalchuk.
At a roundtable last year, a senior VIAM scientist discussed the "development of state unmanned aircraft for special purposes, taking into account air defense systems" and spoke "about the experience in the development of materials and additive technologies for the production of structures of unmanned aircraft systems."
Tracking The Shipment
Analyzing the labels on the barrels shown in the Spanish police video, RFE/RL’s Russian Service identified the manufacturer of the seized NMP as the Chinese company BYN Electronic Material, whose product range includes the solvent.
The video also shows the container’s number, YMLU3377990, which indicates it is owned by the Chinese shipping company YangMing Marine Transport Corp. The company’s website reveals the route of the seized shipment: It left the Chinese port of Qingdao on June 19 and arrived in Singapore on July 10. On July 28, it left for Barcelona, where it arrived on September 21 -- three weeks before Spanish police announced the seizure.
Records reviewed by RFE/RL’s Russian Service show that NMP produced by BYN was purchased in 2023 by the Russian company Aventel RUS.
Prior to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Aventel RUS sought to become a supplier of NMP to the Sverdlov Plant, a Russian explosives manufacturer under U.S. sanctions, but was unsuccessful in its bid.
‘Operation Test Tube’
The Spanish investigation, conducted with assistance from the European Anti-Fraud Office, began in 2022 under the code name Operation Probirka, the Russian word for “test tube.”
Spanish police say they zeroed in on a Spanish company “managed by citizens of Russian origin” who developed a complex network to supply “illegal chemical products to Russia.”
The Spanish firm had a subsidiary in Moscow that was the ultimate recipient of the chemicals, though their final destination was obscured by shell companies in third countries, including Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, that served as intermediaries, Spanish police allege.
They said shipments were diverted to Russia en route by land to these fictitious recipients, a scheme that has been used to funnel sanctioned dual-use electronics to Russia through Central Asia in circumvention of U.S. and EU efforts to choke off global supply chains for Russia’s military.
Spanish police, who said in their October announcement of the raid that their case was ongoing, did not respond to a request for comment about the current status of the investigation.
