In June 2022, at a time when swathes of fertile land in southern Ukraine had recently fallen under Russian military occupation, Belarus's pro-Moscow leader, Alyaksandr Lukashenko, boasted of growing European demand for his country's rapeseed oil.

"Even in this period of crazy sanctions, Europe is asking, 'Give us rapeseed oil,'" Lukashenko told local officials during a visit to the Mahilou region in eastern Belarus.

By the end of that year -- the first year of Russia's brutal, full-scale invasion of Ukraine -- Belarus was indeed the European Union's top supplier of rapeseed oil, selling 114,000 tons of the product.

The EU's top rapeseed oil supplier in 2021? Ukraine.

The reason for the drop in Kyiv's exports is evident.

Due to Russian occupation, as well as mining and other military activities on its own side of the contact line, Ukraine has lost about 18 percent of the total arable land it held on the eve of the invasion, according to the Leibniz Institute for Agrarian Development in Central and Eastern Europe (IAMO).

But what of the record indicators for rapeseed oil from Belarus, a Russian-allied country whose territory was used as a staging post for the Kremlin's February 2022 invasion?

According to Eurostat data, during the first half of 2024 alone, EU member states bought 90,400 tons of rapeseed oil from Belarus -- worth 67.7 million euros ($71 million) -- around four times more than the volumes exported throughout 2021.

An investigation by Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service, and its media partners has found that one of Belarus's largest rapeseed processors is sourcing raw materials from Russian-occupied Ukraine while freely supplying the finished product to the EU.

The investigation also found that the same company has continued supplying rapeseed oil to Lithuania, the only EU country so far to ban Belarusian food exports since the invasion, via Latvia and Poland.

The Schemes investigation was conducted jointly with the independent Lithuanian media outlet 15min.lt, the private Latvian TV channel TV3, the exile-run Belarusian Investigative Center, and the opposition group Community of Railway Workers of Belarus. It was based on records provided by the activist hacker groups Cyber Partisans and KibOrg.

The Plunder Of Kherson

If Ukraine is sometimes referred to as the "breadbasket of Europe," then its southern Kherson region is often referred to as the "breadbasket of Ukraine."

In 2021, farmers in Kherson harvested an independence-era record yield of early season crops, and local authorities had announced plans to develop agrotourism in the region.

Russia's full-scale invasion changed all of that.

The Russian military seized several districts in the Kherson region in the first weeks of the all-out war, and illegal exports of agricultural products soon began under the new Russian-controlled administration.

In August 2024, thanks to a Russian data leak, Schemes discovered that grain produced in Kherson was being transported in large volumes to Belarus.

In 2023, nearly 5,000 tons of rapeseed were taken there, according to the leaked records, by Russian companies including Torgtreyd, a company linked to the Isayev family close to the late father of Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov, and Agrotreyd, a company linked to Anton Tikhomirov, a former top official with the ruling United Russia party in the Crimean city of Yalta.

Other deliveries were made by a Moscow-based company called Veles-Agro and Aleksei Lukyanchenko, a businessman from the Russian city of Barnaul.

At least five companies in Belarus received rapeseed from the Russian-occupied Kherson region, reporters found.

Of those companies, one -- Agroprodukt -- is a major producer and exporter of rapeseed oil.

It is that company's product that Lukashenko has tasted multiple times in front of state television cameras.

And it is that same rapeseed oil that has been exported to EU countries in large volumes.

Circumventing Lithuania's Ban

Despite Western sanctions on Belarus over its role in abetting Moscow's invasion, Belarusian food exports were not targeted by Ukraine's European allies.

But Lithuania imposed its own ban on a wide range of Russian and Belarusian agricultural products in June 2024 as part of efforts to "weaken the economies of states that pose a threat to Lithuania's national security."

That ban was significant because Lithuania and Latvia have been the main importers of Belarusian rapeseed oil into the EU.

Throughout 2024, these two countries each received about 50,000 tons of rapeseed oil from Agroprodukt.

Records of those deliveries were gathered by the Community of Railway Workers of Belarus, an opposition collective formed during mass antigovernment protests in 2020 that receives leaked data from state-owned Belarusian Railway.

Schemes first reported last August that Agroprodukt was purchasing raw materials from Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories.

Agroprodukt director and co-founder Aleh Tsiasliuk, for his part, said in August 2023 that his company was running short of raw materials.

"We need over 300,000 tons of rapeseed per year, and all of Belarus produces about 900,000 tons. There are a lot of processors, and everyone needs it. So about 30 percent of the required amount has to be purchased from neighbors. Rapeseed was previously brought from Ukraine and Russia, but now only Russian supplies remain," Tsiasliuk told journalists.

Agroprodukt shipping records seen by Schemes journalists shows the company receiving deliveries whose origin is listed as the "Kherson region" in the "Russian Federation."

In other words, the Russian-occupied Ukrainian region of Kherson.

In Latvia, the logistics company K.I.F. is one of four firms importing Agroprodukt rapeseed oil.

Since 2021, the year before Russia's full-scale invasion, K.I.F's turnover has increased from over 1 million euros annually to 2.3 million euros as of 2023, according to official company reports.

When the Latvian TV channel TV3 visited the company's office in Riga in January, a K.I.F. representative told reporters that they "have no information that the imported product from Belarus was produced from raw materials originating in the occupied territories."

The representative promised to conduct a check on their suppliers.

Meanwhile, Lithuania's ban does not appear to have prevented Belarusian food products from entering the country.

In an interview with 15min.lt, a manager for the Lithuanian logistics firm TLSC said goods could still be brought in via Latvia or Poland, thus circumventing the ban.

Another Lithuanian forwarding company, Baltijos Pervezimai, recommended the same workaround to 15min.lt's reporter, who was posing as a potential client.

Baltijos Pervezimai's representative admitted that it was working with Belarus's Agroprodukt in spite of the ban.

Friends In High Places

Agroprodukt is more than just a rapeseed oil producer.

The company is 70 percent owned by the Belarusian firm Tranzit-Avto 2003, which Ukraine hit with sanctions in January 2023.

Commenting on that decree, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the punitive measures targeted "legal entities and individuals used by the aggressor state to transport military equipment and soldiers by rail."

It is unclear under what circumstances Tranzit-Avto 2003 may have transported Russian soldiers or military equipment.

The Ukrainian Security Service did not respond to a request for further information in time for publication.

What is clearer is the connection of Agroprodukt and its parent company to the Lukashenko regime.

In a 2021 interview, Agroprodukt's Tsiasliuk boasted that "the [Minsk] authorities know me, and I can approach them [and] convey people's requests, knowing they will be considered."

The sole listed owner of Tranzit-Avto 2003, Alyaksey Shvedov, is even closer to the seat of power.

Data for border crossings obtained by Cyber Partisans, a Belarusian hacktivist group, showed that Shvedov in the past traveled to Ukraine in the same car as Alyaksandr Zaitsau, an employee of the Belarusian president's administrative affairs office, on more than one occasion.

For all this, neither European nor Ukrainian sanctions have been imposed on Agroprodukt itself.

This means the company can both sell oil in the EU and purchase rapeseed from European and Ukrainian farmers.

That might change, though.

After reviewing the findings of the joint media investigation, Vladyslav Vlasiuk, Zelenskyy's sanctions policy commissioner, said, "We can speak of the actions of a foreign legal entity that create real or potential threats to Ukraine's national interests and territorial integrity, which may serve as grounds for imposing Ukrainian sanctions."

Reporters succeeded in reaching Agroprodukt director Aleh Tsiasliuk, but he refused to discuss any of his company's activities.

Written by Chris Rickleton, based on reporting by Schemes, the investigative unit of RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service.