Occupation and the first blow
The Berdiansk port was seized under the control of the Russian military at the very beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Since March 14, 2022, the occupants have been using the port to support their military operations, in particular, for the siege of Mariupol.
At that time, Russians reported about the coming of military landing ships, calling it “a benchmark event which will open up logistic possibilities for the Black Sea fleet”. However, on March 24, the Ukrainian forces hit a large landing ship, the Saratov, with a rocket.
Russian landing ship, the Saratov, in Berdiansk port after the Ukrainian rocket strike
The port renewed its operation on June 30, 2022, but this time, as an additional centre for removing Ukrainian agricultural products. As of that moment, over 100 thousand tons of grain were stored in Berdiansk, Olha Saminina told by phone, she had managed SE “Berdiansk Sea Trade Port” before the Russians occupied both the port and the city.
“Prior to the occupation, we had about 40,000 tons of grain in the storages, and the private storages of clients in Berdiansk had a total of about 80,000 tons of grain,” Saminina elaborated. “They [Russian military] looted everything they saw, including documents.”
The scale of the operation: the appetites of the occupants
Prior to the full-scale invasion, the indices of the grain transshipment in the Berdiansk port had been decreasing for several years in a row. The main reason for it was the bridge, built by Russians in the Kerch Strait (also known as “the Crimean bridge”) — it was commissioned in May 2018.
“Since “the Crimean bridge” was built, [Russians] introduced limitations for the height of the ships — it cut out a part of the fleet which used to come to Ukrainian ports,” Kateryna Yaresko, a journalist of the SeaKrime project, explains. “It was introduced for this very reason – to limit the economic possibilities of Ukraine.”
Besides, as per Yaresko, Russians held up ships, passing to and from Berdiansk and Mariupol, for several days of border guard inspection. The journalist of the SeaKrime project noted that it raised the freight costs considerably, so many ship owners refocused on the Ukrainian ports of the Black Sea.
After the occupation of Berdiansk, Russians published the first data about the port capacity only in May 2024 – according to the data of the occupation’s Ministry of Transport of the Zaporizhzhia region, in 2023, 244 thousand tons of products passed through the Berdiansk port. That’s when Volodymyr Stelmachenko, a port director, appointed by the Russians, predicted a two-fold increase in the freight turnover in 2024: as per his plans, the indices were to reach 500 thousand tons – 2019 was the last year when the port demonstrated such results. Stelmachenko named foreign sanctions as the main hindrance to the increase in the port capacity, “In particular, the ship owners, without whom our port cannot work, are very susceptible to sanctions.”
Russians don’t conceal the fact that grain is the main commodity they take out of Berdiansk – in June 2024, it was confirmed by Iryna Hekht, the then head of the occupation government of the Zaporizhzhia region. “At present, our main cargo is grain, which is exported to Africa and other countries. This year, these have been Serbia, Turkey, Bangladesh, Venezuela.”
A month before that, the representative of the occupation administration of the region claimed the renewal of the operation of six wharves in the Berdiansk port As of May 2024, they couldservice six ships at the same time – in wharves 1-5 and 8; wharves 6-7 were taken out of operation, and the Rusen Mete, a broken ship, was docked in the ninth, it can even be seen in Google Maps . This information is confirmed by the internal documents of the occupied port, accessed by the journalists of KibOrg and NGL.media.
According to the documents of the occupation administration of the ports in the Sea of Azov, the canal draught for ships which may enter the port is from 6.9 to 7.2 metres, which considerably exceeds the depth in the Russian ports of the Sea of Azov. For instance, in Rostov-na-Donu, they service ships with a maximum draught of 4.1 metres.
The port with ships near the wharves, including a grain transporter under loading
Logistic schemes: how the grain origin is concealed
The ships from Berdiansk, loaded with Ukrainian grain, are in transit mostly via Russian ports of Temryuk and Kavkaz. There, Russians legalize the stolen grain, offering it in the international market as purely Russian.
“If the port doesn’t have a customs checkpoint [like they do in Berdiansk], the voyage is registered as a coastal trip and the ship enters a specific port with all the available services,” Kateryna Yaresko from SeaKrime explains. “Russians execute documents which stipulate that the port of cargo dispatch is Temryuk or Kavkaz. That’s how they conceal the information that the ship was actually loaded with grain in Berdiansk.”
At the end of 2024, Yevhen Balytskyi, the occupation “governor” of the seized part of the Zaporizhzhia region, started talking about the need to establish a customs office in Berdiansk.
On the one hand, the introduction of the customs would allow the occupants to take the Ukrainian agroproducts faster, and on the other, it would formally legalize this process.
At the beginning of 2025, Andrii Belyaev, the head of the Southern customs department of Russia, stated that the port infrastructure in Berdiansk is ready to accommodate the officials of the Russian customs office and voiced the plans about restoring the objects of customs infrastructure in the occupied Berdiansk, Melitopol, and Skadovsk.
The main actors: who makes money on robbery
We managed to gain access to the documents about the entry of ships to the Berdiansk port in 2024–2025 and verified 20 ships, which made a total of 85 trips. Among the countries, to which grain was brought, at least according to the documents, were Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Syria prior to the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 , Saudi Arabia, and Bangladesh.
The same documents demonstrate that the total amount of agricultural products, exported by the occupants out of the Berdiansk port during this period, is over 420.6 thousand tons.
Three Russian companies used the services of the port most often – the Lipetsk company Bars LLC (income in 2024 – RUR 16.4 billion), the Crimean company, Selectagro LLC (RUR 3.4 billion) and the Moscow First Trading Company JSC (RUR 1.2 billion). From time to time, there were ships in the port, servicing the interests of such enterprises as GRACE LLC, Agora LLC, Terra Trade Company LLC, Element Agro LLC and Makoveya LLC.
The US sanctions cover most ships that entered Berdiansk in the last year and a half, since May 2022. Yet, some are still not under sanctions: for instance, the Victoria K and the Victoria V – both have been in the Berdiansk port numerous times, and in January 2025, they took Ukrainian coal out of Mariupol.
In addition, there are still no sanctions for ships such as the Kapitan Yakovlev, the Kapitan Mironov, and the Sormovskiy 48, which have been frequently reported in Ukrainian and international media in the occupied Ukrainian ports over the last three years.
The routes of Russian ships
The map presents the schematic routes of Russian ships that were taking grain out of Berdiansk. Use filters to search for specific ships or routes. Click the route line for detailed information about the voyage, or click the port to see all the routes passing it.
Who coordinates the removal of grain from Berdiansk?
The main logistic operator of the Berdiansk port is Kristall-2019 company, founded in Simferopol six years ago. Prior to 2023, the company had had neither employees nor economic activity, until it changed its place of registration for Berdiansk at the beginning of 2024 (Gorky Str., 25). Finally, the year 2024 brought the company a billion roubles.
Olena Polieva
70% of the company belongs to Olena Polieva, born in Kyiv, who received a Russian passport after the Crimea was occupied. Several of her other companies are situated on the peninsula too, but none of them has become as successful as Kristall-2019.
Sergey Glebov
The director general of the company is Sergey Glebov, a citizen of Russia, who used to live in Volgograd. In 2022, he visited the occupied territories of the Kherson, Donetsk, and Zaporizhzhia regions several times, which is registered in the Russian database of border crossings. In June 2023, he headed Kristall-2019, and a month later, according to the data of the Russian Pension Fund, he received the position of “the deputy director in legal issues” of the Berdiansk Sea Trade Port. He still combines the work in both enterprises.
At the same time, in summer 2023, the Kristall-2019 company started working in the Berdiansk port.
“The establishment of partner relations between our organizations has expectedly led to the synergy which has been reflected in a significant increase in the volume of shipments through the Berdiansk port,” says the letter ofV.I. Korniliev, the then executive director of Kristall-2019, to Volodymyr Stelmachenko, the occupation port manager.
In addition, the company offered Stelmachenko to establish a grain inspection laboratory in the port, which would accelerate the analysis of products to be further sent for export.
Kristall-2019 periodically reported to Stelmachenko about its plans on cargo shipments. In November 2023, the company plannedto have loaded almost 100 thousand tons by the end of the year. In 2024, it intended to do 400 thousand tons. This year, Kristall-2019 also plans to load about 400 thousand tons of cargo.
According to the letter of Yu.A. Panfilov, “the acting captain of the sea port of Berdiansk”, dated March 2024, Kristall-2019 LLC was the only logistics company, working directly in the port and invited to work meetings.
Captains of pirate ships
The journalists of KibOrg and NGL.media managed to identify the personal data of 34 captains of ships that illegally exported products from the occupied port. Seven of them still have Ukrainian citizenship.
For instance, Serhii Ryzhov, a 48-year-old Crimean, who entered Berdiansk with the Sofia six times, or another person, born in the Crimea, – 55-year-old Vadym Honcharov. The latter is the owner of the “record” among the identified captains – in 2024–2025, he illegally came to Berdiansk with the Sofia 13 times. Three years ago, Honcharov started working for the Kuban Sea Company LLC and mainly goes to Turkish ports.
Most captains are not public figures, but the information we have managed to gather suggests that some of them have already encountered difficulties in their professional activities, for instance, due to their cooperation with the occupants.
For instance, this is true for a 57-year-old Russian, Oleksandr Oleinikov, who sailed on the Alfa M on the Berdiansk-Kavkaz-Egypt route in October 2024.
Two years ago, he was detained together with the dry-cargo carrier, the Viktor Andriukhin, in the French port of Fos-sur-Mer. The ship was leased by the Russian company, Alfa LLC, which is related to GTLK JSC – the State Transport Leasing Company. The latter claims to be the largest leasing enterprise in Russia, specializing in air, water, railway, and urban passenger transport. GTLK JSC is subordinate to the Russian government and is deemed strategic for the Russian economy.
On February 28, 2022, when the Viktor Andriukhin was present in the French port, the EU member states applied sanctions to GTLK JSC which allowed for detaining the ship. At the time, Oleinikov complained about harassment and attacks on Russians.
“I know that in some ports, when Ukrainian seamen see their Russian colleagues, they start behaving aggressively, throwing tomatoes and the like. We can’t do that. It doesn’t correspond to the status of the Russian seaman,” the captain commented.
Before 2022, Oleinikov often sailed to European ports, but since the beginning of the full-scale war, the Russian ships of Alfa LLC, headed by Oleinikov since 2021, are no longer welcome in Europe. Since then, he often sailed to ports in Turkey and Abkhazia.
Another captain, about whom more information was found, is 45-year-old Nikolai Timofeev, who was on the Berdiansk-Temryuk-Beirut route on the Viktoria K in September 2024. In 2017, Timofeev, the then chief mate of the Merle, was detained on suspicion of smuggling and had to spend several months in a Libyan prison.
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Timofeev entered the ports of Romania, Turkey, Egypt, and Iran.
Previously, the journalists of KibOrg found outthat the captains of the ships which came to Berdiansk intentionally switched off their AIS transmitters as they came closer to the occupied port. It allows them to avoid the vision field of independent monitoring bodies, which collect data about the incoming ships.
Captains of Russian vessels
Baltic Control: the Danish company at Russia’s service
The Danish company, Baltic Control, is called the leading international company in providing surveyor services surveyor services – an independent inspection of ships and cargo to prevent disputes and claims regarding the causes of damage to goods between interested parties . In early 2023, A/S Baltic Control Group Ltd. was acquired by the French company, Apave Group, which has been specializing in risk management for over 150 years. At that moment, Baltic Control had 53 branches around the world – for instance, in Odesa, and, at least by October 2022, – in Novorossiysk. In 2023, the mention of the office in Russia disappeared from the company’s website, though there was no official announcement about Baltic Control leaving the Russian market.
The main website of Baltic Control specifies the address of the Russian branch as Admirala Serebryakova Str., 79, office 5 in Novorossiysk. However, there has never been a branch of Baltic Control at this address in Russia. Instead, if one opens the archive of Baltic Control Russia’s website via Wayback Machine, it is evident that the branch in Novorossiysk was legally registered at the address of Gorodska Str., 1. In addition, the contact email addresses on the main website of the Danish and that of the Russian branch coincide.
“Baltic Control Novorossiysk” LLC was created in 2013. Over the last three years, the company has continued to operate in Russia, earning almost RUR 370 million last year.
It has become clear from the internal documents of the Berdiansk port that Russian companies operating there are actively using the services of Baltic Control. For instance, in scheduling the ship, the Leonid Pestrikov, for the Berdiansk-Kavkaz-Egypt route in March 2025, one of the key conditions was obligatory “ship’s hold inspection by the independent survey company Baltic Control”. The journalists of KibOrg and “Slidstvo.Info” determinedthat it referred to the Russian branch of the same Danish company, Baltic Control.
“This case is a clear demonstration of the gaps, currently present in the communication with Ukraine’s international partners,” Kateryna Rashevska, a lawyer of the Regional Human Rights Centre, says. “As per President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Denmark is one of the leaders in supporting our country. Yet, private entities still cooperate with the aggressor country, violating the Ukrainian legislation and international law. The policy of non-recognition, which should be adhered to by all states in the context of aggression towards another country, in particular, envisages informing its own citizens about the prohibition to cooperate with the occupying power in the seized territories. Private entities also have a responsibility to avoid doing damage and involvement in the activity, supporting the occupation and/or infringement of human rights.”
The journalists sent an inquiry to the main office of Baltic Control requesting comments, but there was no response as of the time of publishing this investigation.
Text: Maksym Dudchenko, editor: Oleh Onysko, page make-up and graphics: Nazar Tuziak, mentor: Maksym Savchuk, manager: Lina Ivanova, motion design: Maksym Slasnyi.