EU Commission, Parliament respond to ‘blood birch’ scandal – now the Council must act

Our nine-month undercover investigation, released in January this year, showed that EU Member States had imported more than €1.5 billion of Russian birch plywood since EU sanctions on the product took effect. It found that no country had a clean record when it came to sanctions-busting ply purchases.

We discovered that birch ply made by seven of Russia’s top 10 plywood manufacturers, routed via third countries like China, Turkey and Kazakhstan, is still sold in Europe. This includes products from two plywood manufacturing titans, Sveza and Segezha, linked to sanctioned Russian oligarchs.

The report, titled ‘Blood-stained birch’, received primetime and recurring TV coverage on Poland’s leading television channel TVN, and was featured on public television and in prominent media outlets in many other EU countries, including key entry points for Russian wood. The findings were reported in Germany, Estonia, Portugal, Greece, Latvia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, and Finland, as well as in the UK.

It prompted action at both EU and Member State level. Preliminary data for the month after our report was released shows that Poland is no longer the top importer of ‘blood birch’ in the EU, although it is far too early to make definitive conclusions about the EU’s overall imports, which the data shows have continued.

At the same time, Earthsight’s undercover investigators have seen offers of illegal wood as recently as April 2025, and there are signals launderers are scrambling to adapt to shifts created by the last few months. 

EU Parliament calls for stronger wood sanctions to aid enforcement

Existing EU sanctions on Russian and Belarusian wood products, which came into effect in mid-2022, do not cover products made with Russian and Belarusian wood in third countries. This loophole is allowing Russian and Belarusian firms – including those with close ties to the warmongering regimes in the two countries – to continue to profit from European demand. For that reason alone, it should be closed. But it is also undermining enforcement of existing sanctions.

Action can already be taken against such goods under a pre-existing law meant to prevent imports of illegal wood - the EU Timber Regulation (EUTR). That law places the burden of proof on importers to have checks in place to ensure their wood was legally harvested, and official EU guidance says that in the current climate this is ‘impossible’ for unsanctioned products manufactured in third countries using Russian and Belarusian trees. But that guidance is not legally binding, and even if authorities decide to follow it, the penalties they can impose are pitifully low. Historically, most companies found in breach of EUTR have gotten away with nothing more than a warning.

Sanctions breaches are treated more seriously and bring higher penalties. But even when breaches of existing sanctions are suspected, Earthsight has learned, Customs authorities in the EU have been commonly handing such cases to EUTR authorities for action instead of taking action themselves. This is partly because proving (or disproving) country of manufacture (which Customs authorities need to do) is much harder than proving country of harvest (as EUTR authorities need to).

Extending sanctions would help make stronger cases and enable more of the kinds of penalties which are truly dissuasive. For example, European Customs authorities would be able to use techniques such as isotopic testing to cast doubt on the claimed origin of shipments. That evidence can then be used to obtain the search warrants needed to get crucial proof from electronic communications.  

An open appeal spearheaded by Greenpeace Ukraine in response to our report and signed by more than 80 organisations across Ukraine and the world called on EU to tighten sanctions on wood in the way described above.

Following the appeal and related Earthsight advocacy, an EU Parliamentary resolution included text that echoes this key ask of Earthsight’s January report – broader sanctions on Russian and Belarusian wood. Passed in March 2025 to reiterate support for Ukraine in the face of increasing aggression by Russia and geopolitical uncertainty, the Resolution specifically calls for prohibiting wood products processed in third countries that incorporate wood from Russia or Belarus.

[The EU Parliament] “Calls on the Commission and the Member States to develop broader sanctions on Russian and Belarusian wood, including specifically prohibiting the import or purchase of wood products processed in non-EU countries that incorporate wood, particularly birch plywood, originating in Russia or Belarus, to support the enforcement of current sanctions”

- Extract from European Parliament Resolution, 12 March 2025

There is a precedent for this: the EU already sanctions products made in third countries containing Russian steel. Earthsight has learned that this measure has already been proposed for inclusion in past rounds of sanctions by EU Member States, but has been rejected.

The EU announced the development of a new Russia sanctions package earlier this month, but reports so far make no mention of further action on wood. This is a missed opportunity: the Council must ban wood products made with Russian and Belarusian raw material in third countries.

The Commission reacts and a ‘timber oligarch’ is finally sanctioned

In early March, Earthsight was invited to present its findings to the multi-stakeholder meeting of the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR). Soon after, the EU sanctions watchdog DG FISMA issued a first of its kind sanctions circumvention alert on plywood.

The alert, published on 14 March, warns firms and enforcement agencies of the considerable risk of illegality affiliated with imports of birch plywood from third countries. The guidance is an official confirmation of the EU’s widespread conflict plywood problem. It can be used to query the levels of due diligence carried out by firms on birch plywood imports, as well as to hold enforcement agencies in key importing countries to account about the quality and frequency of their checks on incoming birch ply shipments.

Also in March, Earthsight was invited to present its findings at a closed-door meeting of enforcement officials at Europol’s headquarters in the Hague.

In February, the EU Council voted to include Vladimir Yevtushenkov, whose companies include Russia’s largest logging firm Segezha, in the EU’s 16^th round of sanctions against the aggressor state. Earthsight’s report had showed a Segezha sales representative detailing how the firm manages to bypass sanctions by shipping its goods via Turkey and China.

In May 2025, another arm of the EU Commission, DG Trade, announced provisional tariffs on imports of Chinese hardwood plywood, including birch. This was a preliminary result of an ongoing investigation initiated by competing European ply producers. While this is a promising development, it does not go far enough to put a dent in the illegal plywood trade.

The provisional tariffs do not make any distinction between birch and lower-risk hardwood species and the additional levy envisaged is unlikely to be high enough to deter voracious Chinese birch ply launderers from supplying the EU market with illicit goods.

A key takeaway from Blood-stained birch was that tariffs are no substitute for well-enforced laws. We documented a representative of Segezha – linked to the now-sanctioned Vladimir Yevtushenkov – bragging about how similar tariffs on exports from Turkey were no deterrent to his company’s EU sales.

"This rather looks like legalisation. They [the EU] said, if you cannot beat them, lead them. They threw the 15 per cent customs on top of it and let it [us] work. That is how I see it.”

- Segezha sales representative

Poland unseated as top ‘blood birch’ importer

Just a week after the release of Earthsight’s report, the Polish president approved a new rule requiring companies importing wood from countries ‘at risk’ of being used to launder sanctioned wood to provide more documentation about their purchases.

This was followed by seizures in Poland and further raids in the Netherlands. Following a tip-off by Earthsight about a container from Chinese launderer Tianma Lvjian in January, we have learned that Customs authorities in Greece have detained it and several other shipments from the same supplier. Investigations are ongoing.

Our report had shown that Poland was by far the biggest importer of ‘blood birch’ in the EU since sanctions took effect, with its imports from China – where wood launderers are the most prolific – doubling in 2024. Preliminary data for February 2025, however (the most recent month available), saw Poland unseated from the top spot by Spain, followed by Portugal.

Earthsight joined Spanish NGO Ecologistas en Accion to submit a formal complaint to Spanish EUTR and sanctions authorities in February 2025 and are soon sending a similar complaint to Portuguese authorities. Time will tell if enforcement agencies in Spain, Portugal and elsewhere in the EU have tightened checks at their borders.

There is more momentum now to accelerate action on conflict wood imports than there has been at any point since the invasion of Ukraine. Even leading industry groups in the EU and United States have issued their own appeals to crack down on the trade, citing the unfair competition created by illegal Russian wood imports.

Earthsight will continue monitoring the market keenly. However, the ball is now in the court of enforcement agencies across the EU to act on the detailed findings of our report, to ensure FISMA’s guidance is heeded and to ensure EU laws are enforced. The EU Council can give them a much-needed helping hand by expanding sanctions on the Russian and Belarusian wood sectors – a top earner for the two regimes – as soon as possible.