The model, British tech and Russia's war machine

The trail led us to Valeria Baigascina, a 25-year-old, originally from the central Asian state of Kazakhstan but now living in Belarus. A part-time model, she posts regularly about her jet-set lifestyle on social media. In the past two years she has visited Dubai, Sri Lanka and Malaysia.

Her social media gave no indication she was also the director of a firm which had channelled millions of dollars’ worth of equipment to sanctioned companies in Russia, as our search of customs documents revealed.

According to Belarusian registration details, Ms Baigascina was the founder and director of a company called Rama Group LLC. Set up in February 2023, it is registered to an address in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan - 2,300 miles (3,713 km) from her home in Belarus.

Both countries are former Soviet states with strong trading links to Russia. Belarus remains Moscow’s strongest ally in Europe.

Ms Baigascina said she was the founder of the company but had sold it in May. She denied the allegations, saying that when she had owned it, “nothing like that was supplied”. She then hung up.

Later, by email, she told us the accusations were “ridiculous” and based on “false information”.

Our research shows that in May this year she sold Rama Group to her best friend, Angelina Zhurenko, who runs a lingerie business in Kazakhstan.

Ms Zhurenko told us: “Trading activities are carried out exclusively within the framework of the current legislation of Kyrgyzstan. The company does not violate any prohibitions. Any other information is false.”

The director of the other intermediary company, Shisan, is listed as Evgeniy Anatolyevich Matveev. We put our allegations to him by email.

He told us that our information was “false” and that he ran “a business supplying exclusively civilian goods manufactured in Asian countries”.

He continued: “This does not contradict the laws of the state in which I work, and has nothing to do with US sanctions, because it is impossible to prohibit free trade in Asian goods available for sale and delivery.”

There’s no evidence that Beck Optronics knew about these shipments or that the final destination of the lenses was Russia.

The company told us it had nothing to do with the shipments: “Beck has not shipped anything contrary to UK export controls or any sanctions applying in the UK. It has had no dealings with any party or company in Russia, Kyrgyzstan or Thailand, was not aware that any shipments might ultimately be destined for any of these destinations and has not shipped anything to these destinations.”

It believes some of the equipment listed wasn’t even made by the company and that customs documents may have been falsified.

But these alleged exports are part of a much bigger picture involving shipments from a number of sources.

Analysis of customs documents by the Washington-based security think tank C4ADS suggest that Shisan completed 373 shipments via Kyrgyzstan to Russia between July and December 2023.

Of these, 288 contained goods that fall under customs codes for “high-priority battlefield items”.

Over the same six-month period, Rama Group completed a total of 1,756 shipments to Russia. Of these, 1,355 were for items on the “high-priority battlefield items” list.

Its most recent shipments, including electronics by US and UK companies, went to a Russian company named Titan-Mikro, which has been subject to US sanctions since May 2023 for operating within Russia’s military sector.

“When they sell this technology to a client who is potentially a Russian end-user, they fully should understand that this is to kill people,” says Olena Tregub from NAKO, Ukraine’s independent anti-corruption organisation.

She warns that the holes in the sanctions regime are costing lives.

“Without those technologies, those weapons would not fly. The brain of those ballistic missiles, the brain of those kamikaze drones, are made of Western technology,” she says.

International authorities are aware of Kyrgyzstan’s role in sanctions evasion.

In April, UK’s foreign secretary at the time, David Cameron, travelled to Bishkek and urged the Kyrgyz authorities to do more to tighten their sanctions' compliance.

The Kyrgyz president expressed confidence that Lord Cameron’s official visit to his country would “give new impetus to multifaceted co-operation between Kyrgyzstan and the UK”.

David O’Sullivan, the EU’s Special Envoy for the Implementation of Sanctions told us that efforts continue to shut down “illicit procurement networks”, and that “companies are required to undertake due diligence checks to understand who is the final end-user and where ‘battlefield items’ end up ultimately”.