Belarusian Contraband Cigarettes Have Flooded Into Russia

• 8.09.2026, 10:19

Tighter controls along the western border have drastically altered the routes of illegal shipments.

Tighter border controls between Belarus and the European Union have led to a definitive shift in tobacco smuggling toward Russia.

According to “Delovoy Peterburg”, another shipment of contraband Belarusian tobacco was recently seized in St. Petersburg. According to the press service of the North-West Customs Administration (NWCA), the shipment consisted of nearly half a million units of unmarked tobacco products with a total value of 79 million Russian rubles. Among the 439,000 packs, in addition to those manufactured in Belarus, there were also products from the United Arab Emirates.

Previous shipments, however, were “purely” Belarusian.

In August, Pskov customs officials detained a truck registered in St. Petersburg that was transporting 120,000 packs of unmarked cigarettes from Belarus. Their value was estimated at more than 18.3 million Russian rubles.

Shortly before that, officers at the Baltic Customs Office in the seaport of St. Petersburg discovered 121,000 packs of contraband cigarettes manufactured in Belarus, hidden inside rolls of insulation. The value of the shipment was estimated at 10 million Russian rubles.