The Danish surveying services company Baltic Control helped the Russians remove stolen grain from occupied Berdyansk.
This is stated in the investigation of journalists KibOrg and NGL.media.
Journalists managed to gain access to documents on ship calls to the Berdyansk port during 2024-2025 and verify 20 ships that made a total of 85 voyages. Among the countries to which grain was exported, at least according to the documents, are Turkey, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Bangladesh.
The same documents indicate that the total amount of agricultural products exported by the occupiers from the port of Berdyansk during this time exceeds 420.6 thousand tons.
The portʼs services were most often used by three Russian companies: Lipetsk LLC Bars, Crimeа LLC “Selectagro”, and Moscow JSC “Pervaya Torgovaya Kompaniya”. Occasionally, vessels serving the interests of such enterprises as GRACE LLC, “Agora” LLC, “Terra Trade Company” LLC, “Element Agro” LLC, and “Makoveya” LLC were recorded in the port.
Most of the ships that have entered Berdyansk over the past year and a half have been subject to US sanctions since May 2022. However, there are some that have not yet been subject to sanctions: the ships Victoria K, Victoria V, Captain Yakovlev, Captain Mironov, and Sormovsky 48.
Journalists also identified 34 ship captains who illegally exported products from the occupied port. Seven of them still have Ukrainian citizenship. These include, in particular, 48-year-old Crimean Serhiy Ryzhov, who entered Berdyansk six times on the ship "Sofia", and another native of Crimea — 55-year-old Vadym Honcharov. The latter is the "record holder" among identified captains: during 2024-2025, he illegally entered Berdyansk 13 times on the ship "Nadezhda".
The Danish Baltic Control was also found to be involved in the export of stolen Ukrainian grain. The companyʼs website until October 2022 indicated that it had an office in Novorossiysk. Later, the entry disappeared from the website, although there was no official announcement about Baltic Controlʼs withdrawal from the Russian market.
As it became known from the internal documentation of the Berdyansk port, Russian companies operating there actively use the services of Baltic Control. For example, during the nomination of the vessel “Leonid Pestrykov” for the Berdyansk — Caucasus — Egypt route in March 2025, one of the key conditions was the mandatory “acceptance of holds by the independent survey company Baltic Control”. Journalists from KibOrg and “Slidstvo.Info” established that this is a Russian branch of the same Danish company Baltic Control.
- In September 2024, The Wall Street Journal wrote that Russia sold stolen grain from the occupied territories of Ukraine for almost a billion dollars.
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