US companies continue to purchase large quantities of birch plywood from Russia, including from companies owned by Russian oligarchs close to V. Putin, who have been sanctioned by the EU and the UK.
One of the largest suppliers of birch plywood is a Russian company that has recently been found to have started logging a 300-year-old virgin forest in a planned nature reserve.
The Ukrainian parliament recently called on the international community to ban the purchase of timber from Russia; this call has been heeded by both the UK and the EU, while the US government has so far ignored it.
Over the past five months, Russian-origin plywood worth 341 million US dollars (retail value) has been imported into the US. This high-value material is used in furniture and kitchen cabinetry in millions of US households.
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Russian timber supplier destroys ancient forest
Documents show that in recent months the fourth largest plywood supplier in Russia is a company from Segezha (Segezha Group), one of Russia's largest logging companies. The largest shareholder of Segezha is billionaire Yevgeny Yevtushenkov (from the group of oligarchs who met with V. Putin on the day of the Russian invasion). In 2015, he visited Russian-occupied Crimea together with V. Putin. J. Yevtushenkov has been sanctioned by the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ukraine and the Czech Republic; he is not yet on the US sanctions lists.
Official reports show that Segezha paid out record dividends to shareholders in 2022. J. Yevtushenkov and his family members (holders of 40.1% of the company's shares) will have received 103 million US dollars.
In June, the last month for which data is available, Segezha exported 1374 m³ of plywood to the US. One of the US companies that continues to purchase Segezha plywood is the Georgia-registered company PG Wood Imports. It is the largest importer of Russian plywood in the US, having received nearly 6000 m³ in the six weeks up to 10 August 2023, representing namely, 30% of all Russian plywood imported during this time.
Segezha, under pressure from interested clients in Europe, had previously voluntarily agreed to stop logging in the most valuable Russian forests controlled by the company. However, at the end of 2022, they broke this agreement and gave the green light for the felling of 1.5 million hectares of centuries-old taiga forests. This is one of the last large, human-untouched areas of Russian forest, which is home to many rare and endangered species. Some trees are more than 300 years old.
Active logging has already begun. In early 2023, local environmentalists discovered that Segezha was logging forests in the Maksimyarvi wildlife nature reserve in Karelia, in north-western Russia. In the first three months of 2023, more than 680 hectares of ancient forest were felled.
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https://www.earthsight.org.uk/news/russian-timber-linked-ancient-forest-logging