Journalists Tracked Sanctioned Cargoes From The EU Through Belarus To Russia Using GPS Beacons

• 25.01.2026, 17:02

A clandestine postal and logistics scheme has been uncovered.

Despite EU sanctions, banned goods continue to make their way from the European Union to Russia through a clandestine postal and logistics scheme. Journalists of BILD have used GPS beacons to trace the path of parcels sent through a network linked to former employees of a Russian Post subsidiary in Germany.

According to the investigation, the key role is played by a logistics firm registered in late 2022 and formally having only a post office box in Cologne, Germany. In fact, parcels are taken to a warehouse near Berlin-Brandenburg airport, from where trucks travel through Poland and Belarus to Russia.

A BMW car of Dmitry V., the former managing director of RusPost GmbH, is regularly parked behind the warehouse. He was tasked by Russian Post in 2014 with setting up a subsidiary in Berlin, but quit shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. BILD was able to confirm through documents that Dmitry V. runs a logistics company to send goods to Russia.

The journalists sent five test parcels with unusable sanctioned electronic components declared as harmless items. The shipping cost was 26 euros per parcel weighing up to two kilograms. All of them crossed the border without any problems and arrived in Moscow.

The German authorities are already checking for possible violations of the law.