Russia Doubled Imports of an Explosives Ingredient—With Western Help
U.S., German and Taiwanese firms made nitrocellulose that was shipped to Russia, much of it through one Turkish company, despite sanctions
WASHINGTON—Russia has boosted its imports of an explosive compound critical to the production of artillery ammunition, including from companies based in the U.S. and other Western countries and allies, despite international sanctions meant to choke Moscow’s wartime production, according to trade data.
Russian imports of nitrocellulose, a highly flammable cotton product central to gunpowder and rocket propellant manufacture, surged 70% in 2022, the first year of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and midway through 2023 had amounted to 3,039 tons of the product, nearly double the 2021 level.
Defense companies around the world have been grappling with ways to source nitrocellulose amid a shortage that has seen prices rise and created chokepoints for production. Only a few countries around the world produce nitrocellulose, since its primary use is in munitions and it is subject to international trade restrictions.
Russia produces little nitrocellulose, the main ingredient in smokeless gunpowder used in artillery, so Moscow’s ability to source it abroad has played a pivotal role in its war against Ukraine, according to U.S. officials and analysts.
“The nitrocellulose that goes into the propellant becomes an artillery shell,” said Bradley Martin, a 30-year U.S. Navy veteran who now heads Rand’s National Security Supply Chain Institute. “The majority of battlefield deaths and a lot of the civilian collateral damage is from artillery,” he said.
Nitrocellulose is also used for civilian purposes in inks, paints, varnishes and related products, but analysts believe that the surging imports are meant for arms, given that the Russian economy has been reoriented for wartime production.
Oleksandr Danylyuk, with the Center of Defense Reforms, a Kyiv-based security think tank that has studied Russian nitrocellulose imports, said Russia’s military is driving the imports.
“All of this demand is either for direct production of projectiles or substitution of nitrocellulose which was originally produced by Russian factories,” said Danylyuk, a former defense and intelligence adviser to the Ukrainian government.
China increased supplies of the compound to Russia in the wake of U.S. and European Union sanctions prohibiting exports of any kind for Moscow’s military. But companies from the U.S., Germany and Taiwan are also among those producing the nitrocellulose shipped to Russia in the past two years, according to trade data.
“China does not sell weapons to parties involved in the Ukraine crisis and prudently handles the export of dual-use items in accordance with laws and regulations,” Liu Pengyu, spokesman for China’s embassy in Washington, said in a statement. “China-Russia economic and trade cooperation does not target any third party and shall be free from disruption or coercion by any third party.”
One small company in Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is responsible for nearly half of Russia’s imports of nitrocellulose since President Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to the trade data.
One Russian importer, Analytical Marketing Chemical Group, received nearly $700,000 worth of nitrocellulose from Taiwan in the past two years, according to shipping data. According to the company’s website, the importer is a regular partner of Russia’s Kazan State Gunpowder Plant, which produces an array of weapons, according to company social-media accounts.
A director for Analytical Marketing Chemical Group said in a message to the Journal that the company hadn’t supplied cotton pulp to defense enterprises since 2019 and that it imports nitrocellulose for civilian purposes.
Before the expansion of the Ukraine war in 2022, Turkey provided less than 1% of Russia’s nitrocellulose imports. By the middle of last year, however, a single Turkish company, Noy İç Ve Diş Ti̇caret, provided nearly half of Russia’s imports of the product, according to Russian customs records provided by trade database ImportGenius and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Most sales by Noy, which is based in Istanbul, were to Russian companies that are registered contractors for the government in Moscow, according to corporate records.
The company didn’t respond to requests for comment. Turkey’s embassy in Washington didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Noy’s first nitrocellulose exports to Russia shipped within three months of Putin’s invasion, and it is through Noy that a significant portion of nitrocellulose manufactured by Western allies has made its way to Russia.
German subsidiaries of New York-based International Flavors & Fragrances sold at least 80 tons of nitrocellulose to Noy, which then shipped the material to Russia last year.
A spokesman for International Flavors & Fragrances said the company was surprised to learn that shipments to Russia of its nitrocellulose products, which it had suspended in April 2022, had continued through a third party.
“We were unaware of this and are reviewing the conditions of this sale and the relationship with this customer,” the spokesman said in a statement to the Journal.
The company said that its product doesn’t have sufficient nitrogen to make it military grade.
Michelle Pantoya, a mechanical engineering professor at Texas Tech University who heads the school’s Combustion Lab research center, said the nitrogen content of civilian-use nitrocellulose can be increased to weapons grade. Regardless of its grade, “chemically and thermodynamically it’s an excellent ingredient for an ordnance system,” she said.
Taiwanese company TNC Industrial manufactured more than 500 tons of the compound that Noy shipped to Russia last year, according to trade data. Hagedorn-NC, which has produced nitrocellulose for more than a century in the western lowlands of Germany, produced a similar amount shipped by Noy to Russia over the past two years.
Hagedorn said it doesn’t produce nitrocellulose for military purposes, and that its product is used as a binder in civil printing inks and lacquer applications. “All exports are approved by the relevant authorities,” the company said in an email to the Journal.
In response to questions about nitrocellulose exports, Marie Güttler, a spokeswoman for Germany’s economic ministry, called the European Union’s sanctions against Russia “unprecedented and far-reaching.”
“Under these restrictions also the direct as well as the indirect export (via third states) of nitrocellulose is prohibited,” she wrote in a statement. “The same applies to cotton cellulose and other cotton products that can be used in the production of explosives.”
Those sanctions were tightened last year, she said, and “the German government and the competent investigative authorities rigorously follow up on indications of sanctions violations.”
TNC said that it didn’t know that its product was being shipped to Russia through Noy and that it manufactured nitrocellulose with a nitrogen content below the military-grade threshold. The company said Taiwanese authorities had earlier this month verified the firm’s security compliance.
“Our company will continue to export industrial grade nitrocellulose,” TNC said.
Taiwan’s International Trade Administration didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The exports to Russia by Western companies also come amid a global shortage of nitrocellulose that is slowing down NATO countries’ production of artillery for Ukraine. Poland, for example, has invested in restarting its nitrocellulose production to meet growing demand for artillery.
“NATO countries are desperately looking for these raw materials,” Danylyuk said.
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security is working to restrict Russia’s access to items such as nitrocellulose that can sustain its war effort, said Thea Rozman, assistant secretary with export-control oversight. Those efforts include “identifying entities—wherever located—that seek to provide support,” she said.
Last month, the Treasury Department levied a new round of sanctions meant to “continue to tighten the vise on willing third-country suppliers and networks providing Russia the inputs it desperately needs to ramp up and sustain its military-industrial base,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.
In December, the Commerce Department added nitrocellulose to its list of high-priority controlled items, which restricts their exports, and the Treasury Department said it would sanction banks or other institutions caught financing such trade.
Martin, the Rand analyst, said that for sanctions to be effective, they must also be applied to the companies supplying the nitrocellulose.
“The sanctions or the threat of sanctions have to go to that level,” he said.